


And lick the sugar from his lips

by dunklenacht310



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bakery AU, Bottom Harry, Bottom Zayn, Dealing With Loss, Gay Sex, Grief/Mourning, Group Counselling, Loss, M/M, Switching, Top Harry, Top Zayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 23:29:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dunklenacht310/pseuds/dunklenacht310
Summary: “I try to be okay. I manage most of the time. Sometimes I don’t,” Harry says, without delving further into the matter because he isn’t ready, not in the slightest. “Wait,” he adds, and rummages through his backpack.Zayn accepts the small carton with a frown, and Harry thoroughly enjoys the realization spreading over his lovely facial features as he reveals the lemon pastry. Zayn stares at it, smiles an eye-crinkling smile that gives Harry a bit of a heartache, and then he looks at Harry in the eyes. “Thanks. I’ve kinda missed these in the last two days.”Harry grins. “Especially made for you and all.”-Bakery AU where Harry and Zayn learn to cope with their losses, and to keep each other upright.





	And lick the sugar from his lips

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and any eventual original character.

People have made fun of Harry for buying the small space in that tiny alley downtown and turning it into a bakery.

Some people have even sighed pitifully at him.

Harry thinks opening the bakery saved his life. It gave him a purpose, something to do, something he himself can take care of. The months before the opening had been filled of things to do, from deciding a name to filling the paperwork for the required licenses and insurances. Harry had been grateful for the distraction, if he’s honest.

Niall understood, and helped. Still does, whether by making sure Harry has his taxes on point, or by serving tables on his days off from his real job. He’s an accountant, so Harry always tries to do his bureaucracy by himself, but then asks Niall to go over it just to be sure. He’s proud to notice that for the last months, Niall hasn’t had to correct anything in Harry’s paperwork.

The bakery has been open and working for eight months now. It’s called _Honeybuns _and it’s Harry’s most prized possession.

He has a decent amount of regular customers, even if he’s not located in a very visible place. His friend Liam, who works in graphic design, had made sick flyers for the opening and taken care of spreading them around town, so people would know the bakery existed, and Harry is also proud to notice people now come there on purpose, having heard of this or that pastry, and wanting to try it.

They never leave unsatisfied. Harry has always baked at home with his mother, since he was very little, and then he took a baking course when opening his own store had become more than an idea, but an actual option.

He has a wide choice of pastries, pies, different kinds of bread, he even makes fresh pasta. Harry also experiments and always creates new recipes, calling them _Baker’s Idea of the Day _and then saving the recipe in his notebook if he sees that the customers really like it.

It’s all Harry does, the bakery. And it’s exactly how Harry wants to live, right now.

So, when people make fun of him for “throwing his photography degree out of the window” and “just settling for a stupid bakery”, he smiles and doesn’t really reply. Most of those people don’t know anything anyway.

Harry manages to earn a decent amount of money every month, and sometimes he thinks it’s probably a more stable income than what he’d earn by being a photographer. So it’s fine, and as he sometimes tells Niall, the bakery is his pride and joy, he wants to own it until he’s old, and buying the old space has been the best idea he ever had.

That day, Harry gets to the bakery at 5 a.m., as usual. He could hire people to serve the tables, so that he wouldn’t need to start working way before dawn for the pastries to be ready by the time the store is actually open for customers, when he can’t be in the kitchen all the time. But he never sleeps much anyway, never has, so it’s not a problem. And the bakery is too small for Harry to _really _need employees. Niall is enough, when he has time. For the rest, Harry is happy to open the small, green wooden door of _Honeybuns _at 5 a.m., and work on his food for three or four hours before the first customer shows up.

Harry’s in a good mood that morning (night?) as he gets into his bakery’s kitchen and starts mixing batter, baking pies, manhandling dough. He thinks the meetings he’s going to are doing something for him, even if he’s never mustered enough courage and willpower to speak yet. He thinks that they’re helping even more than the months and months of therapy sessions he endured a year earlier. Harry saw the therapist for as long as the doctor himself deemed it necessary, but he never particularly enjoyed those sessions. Not that therapy sessions should be _enjoyable_, but whatever. He went to them, because his family and friends, and even himself to an extent, thought it was gonna help him. It did, a little, he’s conscious of that. So he went until the doctor smiled and told him that he had gotten to the end of his metaphorical journey.

But after that, when the bakery wasn’t a thing yet, Harry had felt like he was missing something, something apart from the obvious actual _missing something _Harry always feels.

He’d found the organisation by chance, when he’d seen a flyer Liam had been hired to make for them, and he’d decided to give it a go. He’d met lovely people, listened to heart-breaking stories, and it had helped him realize that he wasn’t alone, there’s always someone who has lived what you lived, someone who understands what you feel.

Harry has gone to the meetings for almost nine months now, started shortly before opening the bakery, and although he’s never spoken about himself, nobody ever forces him. It’s nice not to have pressure. So even after he opened the bakery, he kept going. Harry rarely misses a meeting, and one of the two for this week is exactly that night, so Harry tries to mix more batter and dough that morning, because he won’t be able to stay in the bakery until night as he sometimes does.

He puts on some music, because he kinda feels lonely when it’s so early, the sun isn’t shining yet, and there’s only silence around him. He settles on Shakira, one of her oldest albums because they’re her best in his humble opinion, and then resumes his work.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of the smooth dough under his hands. It’s therapeutic, he thinks, even if he wouldn’t know if it’s a general feeling, or a _Harry-_feeling. He knows that it helps him, and that has to be enough.

At eight, half an hour until opening time, Harry has the lemon pastries in the oven. They’re gonna be warm and ready for when his first customer will show up.

Because he will, Harry’s sure of it, he thinks with a giggle for which he then scolds himself.

It’s just, First Customer’s fit. Harry always looks at him under his eyelashes like a fucking school girl with a crush, and the lad looks back in the same way, sometimes, and it’s frankly quite ridiculous, that neither of them has spoken to each other more than “I’d like a lemon pastry, please” and “There you go, this is the total”.

First Customer has been coming to the bakery every morning, every single one, right at opening time, for six months now. He always orders the same lemon pastry, and he always sits in a booth by the window, eating it while he stares out towards the street or at his phone, and then he leaves by eight thirty, probably to go to work or something. Harry isn’t sure, seeing that they never speak to each other. They look at each other until one of them notices the other’s looking, and then they avert their gaze, and that’s it.

Niall makes fun of Harry for that, says that Harry never had a problem with going up to fit blokes and flirt his way into their pants. It’s true, Harry did that. When he felt the need to be close to someone, to have a warm body in his bed. He went out, danced, charmed and smiled, and he had sex with strangers only to get the hell away from them the next morning, never to call them back again.

He hasn’t done that in forever, now, in months, because it was good while it happened, but it always left him a bit emptier the next day, until it started not even being worth it anymore. And besides, he’d never _flirt _with First Customer. They’re in the bakery, and everything is a bit different when Harry is there, even Harry himself. Harry takes care of the bakery, and that means customers as well. He’d never disturb First Customer during his breakfast to hit on him, maybe even manage to fuck him, only to never see him again.

It doesn’t feel right for some reason, even if Harry doesn’t even know his name.

So no, First Customer with his big eyes and long eyelashes and perfect cheekbones is a no go. A beauty to admire from afar and to feed with the best lemon pastries in town. That’s it.

Shakira sings through her album with no order whatsoever, and Harry rolls his eyes a little at the fact that he doesn’t want to buy the premium version of the music app, so he’s forced to only listen to music on shuffle mode, and he also has to deal with annoying ads in-between songs. He knows there are ways around it, for people like him who don’t get into moral conundrums at the thought of illegally listening to music, but he never has the patience to sit at his computer and study how to hack the music app. Maybe he’ll ask Liam, if Liam doesn’t have a stroke about Harry asking for his help to be a pirate, that is.

The lemon pastries have to be in the oven for ten more minutes, Harry thinks looking at the clock on the wall, and his eyes land on the fridge, where his shitton of pictures are hung. He smiles. There’s pictures with Niall, with Liam, with his family, him and Gemma sitting on a hammock with Gemma almost tumbling over, Robin and Anne holding hands while they walk, even Harry with old friends from his photography program in uni, people he doesn’t see or hear from anymore.

Harry shrugs at the thought of his degree “gathering dust in a corner of his room”, as people sometimes say. It’s not even true, because it has happened before that he’s let his friends or family convince him to take a photography commission and go somewhere to take people’s pictures. That’s more than he aspired to do with that degree, if he’s honest.

The oven dings, and so do the small tubular bells hung on the front door of the bakery. Harry smiles to himself. _Right on time as usual. Maybe I’ll talk to you today, who knows_.

Harry takes out the tray with the pastries from the oven, and carefully brings it out of the kitchen, setting it on the counter. As soon as he makes eye contact with First Customer, noticing his usual leather jacket and skinny jeans and his long hair freshly cut, held up in a topknot and shaved at the sides, Harry’s stomach does a small flip. _Eh, maybe another day_, he thinks embarrassedly.

“Good morning,” he just says, without looking at First Customer and pretending to be busy with setting the pastries in the window using the brand new tong Niall has bought him.

“Good morning,” First Customer says, “I’m sorry, I think I’m quite early, if you’re not open yet I can come back.”

Harry almost has a stroke, because that’s probably the longest sentence First Customer has ever said to him, and his voice is really rich and lovely. He manages to raise his head and smile. “No, no, it’s fine, you’re perfectly on time, these just came out of the oven,” he says, gesturing to the lemon pastries. “The usual?”

First Customer smiles and nods. “Yes, please. And, um, a chai latte?”

_Maybe it’s a day of changes. We spoke and he’s also ordering something to drink_, Harry thinks with an internal sigh. “Coming right up,” he replies.

Harry sees him take his usual seat by the window, and he can’t help thinking that he’s really fit, with those skinny jeans just a little bit larger than the super tight ones Harry himself wears, and the new haircut fits him perfectly, makes Harry wonder how long his hair really is, Harry would like to know, to see it loose just once, he always has a half ponytail but now those side shavings are making Harry have impure thoughts about pulling at that pitch-black hair and… _stop, Harry, he’s a fucking customer and you’re in your bakery, working_, he shakes his head.

He gets the machine going to make the chai latte for First Customer, and while it whirs to life, he changes the playlist on his phone to the one he made for the workday. Harry doesn’t feel like listening to the first songs, though, so he grunts a little and starts skipping, fighting the shuffle and intentioned to just skip until he finds _that one _song he wants to listen to. _Castle on the hill _by Ed Sheeran, is it really too much to ask?

“Are, um, are you okay? You seem a bit angry at the music app?”

Harry freezes and starts, and when he raises his head, he sees First Customer standing right at the counter with a small smile, which maybe is more of a _grin_, and his heart has a small failure. “Uh? Oh, yeah,” he laughs embarrassedly. “’S just, I hate this shuffle thing but I don’t wanna buy the premium version. Not that I, like, wanna endorse piracy!” he raises his hands, almost sending his phone flying, “I, um, I just don’t like it,” he concludes, lamely.

First Customer in his leather jacket and apparently perfect teeth laughs, opening his palm. “I can hack that app in three seconds, if you want. I’m afraid I am a cold-hearted person who doesn’t feel guilty about illegal music streaming,” he declares.

Harry gapes, and then nods trying to close his mouth and handing him the phone. First Customer takes it, and when their fingers brush, Harry feels his cheeks get warmer, and he perfectly sees First Customer’s own blush. He lowers his eyes on Harry’s phone, tapping for a moment, and then he grins again, giving it back to Harry. “All done. Shuffle mode and ads are gone now. You still gotta buy the premium version if you want to have music offline and shit, but at least the annoying parts won’t be a problem anymore.”

Harry gapes again, tentatively pressing skip again and realizing that the order of the songs is the _normal _one, finally. Ed Sheeran starts to sing. “Are you a hacker?” Harry mutters.

First Customer chuckles. “No, I’m Zayn Malik,” he replies.

Harry raises his head from his phone so quickly he has whiplash. _Did he just tell me his name with a joke after six fucking months in which we never spoke to each other? _

First Customer did, apparently, because he’s still standing there, a bit embarrassed and with his hand stretched out awkwardly, waiting for Harry to do something. “Oh,” Harry laughs nervously, “I’m Harry. Styles. Thanks, um, Zayn.”

They shake hands, and then Zayn gestures to nothing at all and his table with another awkward movement, meaning _I’ll get back to my table and leave you alone now_, and Harry would much rather keep speaking to him, but he’s still a customer, _get a fucking grip Harry he just introduced himself_.

Harry has to fight giggles for all the time it takes him to make the chai latte for Zayn, and then he carefully brings both the mug and the plate with the pastry to his table. “There you go. It’s on the house today,” he decides.

Zayn gapes. “No, I, um, I…”

Harry shakes his head. “It’s cool. You freed me from the torments of that fucking app. So let me repay you with your favourite pastry.”

Zayn closes his mouth, and Harry thinks the smile he sends Harry is a bit sad for some reason, but in the end he nods. “Okay then. Thanks, Harry.”

Harry smiles, and leaves him alone again.

He goes back behind the counter to keep setting up the pastry window, and he thinks that it’s nice, being there with no one except Zayn sitting in his booth and looking outside, while Ed Sheeran sings about _driving at ninety down those country lanes _and _we watched the sunset over the castle on the hill_. Harry starts to quietly hum the song under his breath, and after a couple minutes he hears Zayn doing the same.

They exchange a grin over the pastry window, and Harry realizes it’s already been an hour, and Zayn is still there, the pastry gone but the chai latte mug still half full. Maybe he doesn’t have to go anywhere today. Maybe he’s enjoying just being there, like Harry does.

Zayn opens his mouth to speak, and Harry is already there concentrated on listening to whatever he’s gonna say, but Zayn never speaks, because right that moment the door dings, and Niall enters the bakery.

Zayn closes his mouth and averts his gaze, resuming his scrutiny of the world outside the window, and Harry sighs a little disappointedly.

“Morning, Haz,” Niall says cheerfully, hopping over the small divider that closes the counter area and then hugging Harry. “Sorry, I promised you I could spend the day here and help you but something came up with work.”

Harry chuckles. “I’m sure I’m gonna be peachy, Niall.”

“Peachy like this,” Niall declares, grabbing a pastry with peach jam filling and biting on it with a groan. “Fuckin’ heaven.”

Harry hears Zayn give out a clear snort, and he looks a little sideways at him, making a tortured expression. Zayn grins in his cup of chai latte, and then stops looking again.

Harry sets his eyes on Niall again, and finds him with both his eyebrows arched, and a grin of his own. “It speaks?” Niall mouths.

Harry punches him in the shoulder. “Shut up. He does. You interrupted us.”

“I’m sure the awkward staring was very intense today,” Niall nods solemnly. Harry punches him in the shoulder again.

Niall snickers and finishes eating the pastry he stole, demanding a detailed recount of all the tax paperwork Harry is supposed to submit the next day, and Harry takes the folder out of the counter drawer, proudly showing his work to Niall. Niall looks at the documents, humming and nodding, and then he pats Harry on the shoulder, hard. “Very well, my Hazza,” he says, “At this rate, you don’t even need me anymore.”

Harry sighs dramatically. “Yeah, Niall, to be honest, you’ve become more a burden than an asset,” he jokes.

Niall barks a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, when you’ll become the most famous baker in the country, don’t forget who helped you with your _amazing _health insurance for this place.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “I don’t wanna become famous,” he replies, “If I do, then I’ll have too many customers and the bakery will become a _real job_,” he adds in a stage-whisper. “Wouldn’t want all the people who make fun of me for owning a shitty bakery to lose their main source of entertainment.”

“They’re stupid. This place is lovely and you shouldn’t listen to them.”

It’s not Niall who has spoken. Harry turns to look at Zayn, and finds him still sitting there, with a cute blush over his cheeks, and his eyes a bit widened, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

Harry smiles. “Thanks, Zayn,” he says, sincerely.

Zayn clears his throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to jump into the conversation.”

Niall smiles sardonically, and for a moment Harry is scared he’ll make a joke about Zayn being allowed to jump on anything, possibly Harry himself. But Niall doesn’t, to Harry’s relief, and he just goes over to Zayn, pats him on the shoulder like they’re the oldest of friends, and shakes Zayn’s hand while Zayn looks a bit dumbfounded. “Cheers, mate, it’s always good to know someone understands that one,” he says pointing at Harry. “I’m Niall, by the way. I’d love to stay and chat, but work calls. I’m sure I’ll find you here again though.”

Zayn nods, gaping a little. “Zayn. Yeah.”

Harry chuckles nervously, because Niall is honestly a lot sometimes, but Niall seems unfazed as he walks over to Harry again and hugs him over the counter's little door. “Wanna hang out tonight?” he asks Harry.

Harry hums. “I’ve got a meeting tonight, Ni. ‘S Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“Oh, right,” Niall nods. “Still going? Still… helping?”

Harry nods too. “Yeah. It’s nice.”

“It’s not a cult, is it?” Niall asks, as usual, “I dunno. The sitting in circles and speaking makes it feel like a cult.”

Harry snorts. “No, Niall. It’s just a place for people who have lost someone and want to feel less alone, I swear. And you only speak if you want to. Otherwise, no one bothers you,” he replies, and then snaps his mouth shut, remembering that they’re not alone, and that Zayn is listening. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t want Zayn to listen to that. It feels too fucking personal, is all.

He dares take a glance at Zayn, but finds him concentrated on staring out the window again, so maybe he didn’t even hear.

Niall nods and hugs Harry again. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Or even tonight if you wanna hang out when you’re done. Although I know you probably won’t feel like it. But I’m here, yeah?” he says, low and serious, because Niall can look like a careless person, but Harry knows Niall understands him better than most.

Harry nods. “I’ll text you, okay?”

“Okay,” Niall sighs, “See you, Haz.”

Niall goes out the door, and Harry risks another glance at Zayn. Zayn isn’t looking at him, busy checking something on his phone, and Harry sighs, deciding not to disturb him.

More customers come, and at some point, while Harry is busy serving them, he realizes Zayn has gone away, leaving a bill on the table to pay for his pastry and chai latte, even though Harry told him it was on the house.

Harry sighs, putting the bill in the register.

_There’s always tomorrow_, he thinks.

+

The pastries always served on a small table at the meetings are shit, Harry thinks for the hundredth time as he takes one and eats it because it’s just polite towards the organizers. Maybe one day he’ll bring some of his.

There’s a total of eight people, plus Harry and the meeting coordinator, that night. The amount of people always varies. There are a couple regulars, like Harry and Janet, a fifty-year-old woman who lost her son to drugs, or Paul, a middle-aged man whose wife died in a car accident. For the rest, Harry doesn’t know the other people, although he thinks he’s seen three or four of them for the past three meetings. Some people just come once. Others come occasionally.

Harry doesn’t know most names, because the participants can choose not to say their name even if they want to speak about what happened to them. Harry only introduced himself to Janet and Paul a month prior, while they waited for the meeting to start and ate the stale pastries the organization provided.

The girl directing the Wednesday night meetings is called Katherine, and she’s a therapist. They have to be therapists, Harry thinks, to coordinate this kind of meetings. She’s young, in her mid-thirties, and her smile is small but open. Harry likes her.

“Well,” Katherine says after the pastries have been eaten, “I think we can start?”

There’s a shuffle of chairs as they all set themselves in the usual circle, and when they’re all seated, the door creaks open, and Harry has to do all he can to stay still and silent.

It’s Zayn, entering the room with a frown. Harry recognizes him immediately, from his chiselled face, his side shavings, the leather jacket, everything. _It’s him it’s him it’s him_, he thinks frantically, and then pointedly looks at the floor, in a stupid attempt not to be seen.

Zayn takes a glance at the group, and then Harry sees him turn on his heels to go away, shaking his head.

“No, wait!” Katherine calls gently, and Zayn freezes. “Join us, if you want? There’s a chair here.”

Katherine always takes care of setting a couple empty chairs in the circle, next to her, so that any eventual newcomer won’t have to face the awkwardness of grabbing a chair and positioning it in the circle while everybody watches. Katherine is kinda great.

Zayn takes a breath, and then nods, quickly walking over and sitting next to Katherine.

Which brings him to be exactly in front of Harry.

Harry tries not to look at him, but then he clearly hears Zayn gasp. _Fuck, he’s seen me, what do I do?_, he thinks, but there’s not much he _can _do. So he just musters enough courage to look at Zayn, and he smiles a little, just a little.

Zayn looks at him, a bit pale in the face, but he doesn’t smile back.

_Why is he here?_, Harry wonders, but the answer is pretty clear, isn’t it? It has to be the same reason that brought Harry, and everybody else, to the meetings. He’s lost someone important, and he’s trying to find a way to let it go and make his peace with that.

Zayn doesn’t speak at all, and neither does Harry, as usual.

Throughout the meeting, Harry finds the strength to stop wondering about Zayn, and he manages to concentrate on what is being said. He listens to Janet’s story, again, because when you go to the meetings, you can not speak, but you can also retell your story as many times as you think you need.

And Janet is alone, the poor woman, so alone that she needs to say it out loud. Nobody judges her for that. People _understand_, at the meetings.

“My name is Janet. My son was twenty-one,” she says, looking at the floor and with her voice shaking. “He was top of his class, about to finish his bachelor’s. He never did, though. The pressure was too much, or so his therapist has told me after he died. He… he started taking pills, right under my nose, only I was too busy with my own job to _notice_,” she sniffles, “I know it was just to take the edge off, at least at the beginning. But then… the pills became more, and heavier. I found him dead in his bed one morning, with an empty bottle of Oxycodone next to him. The day he died was also the very first day I even got a single hint that something was wrong. I’m sorry, I know I’ve said this a thousand times already,” she says with a small chuckle, crying and drying her eyes. Harry feels his stomach constrict a little, and gulps down in silence.

“It’s okay, Janet,” Katherine says, slowly and with her small smile not faltering. “We’re here to listen. That’s what this group is about.”

Janet nods. “I think the guilt is gonna kill me, sometimes. That I didn’t notice. That I can’t go back and be a good mother, and _notice_ my son was slowly slipping through my fingers.”

Nobody replies. Harry worries at one of the cuts in his skinny jeans. _I think the guilt is gonna kill me. That I can’t go back_, Janet has said. The words echo a little in his mind.

Three more people tell their story after Janet. Harry listens. It helps, to listen to other people’s losses. It makes Harry’s own a little bit more bearable, even if he can’t find it in his heart to speak about his own, not yet.

He almost forgets that Zayn is there, but then he’s quickly reminded when the meeting is over, and Zayn jumps out of his seat and runs out of the room, like someone’s chasing him. Harry catches the glint of tears through his long eyelashes.

He shouldn’t do it, but he runs after him after saying a quick goodbye to the few people he actually talks to in the group. When he runs out of the room the organisation has rented at the ground floor of that school building, he sees Zayn quickly walk towards the end of the alley, a cigarette between his lips and his shoulders hunched while he hugs himself and keeps going.

“Wait!” Harry just says, not daring to call him by his name, because they’re still around the meeting room, and you don’t say your name if you don’t want to.

Zayn freezes, but just for a moment. Then he keeps walking away without turning.

Harry sighs, and doesn’t follow him.

+

Harry is a bit jittery and nervous the next morning, and he takes it out on the bread dough, hitting and punching it to let the last night of shitty sleep go.

He obsessively looks at the clock even if nothing’s in the oven, and he dreads and waits for the moment opening time will come, and Zayn will show up.

_Do I mention last night? Do I pretend like nothing happened? Do I bake a new lemon pastry to implicitly apologise? I didn’t even _do _anything. Should I apologise anyway?_

It turns out Harry doesn’t need to be nervous, because Zayn doesn’t show up at all.

And he doesn’t come back on Friday, either.

Harry is stupid, because he pines a little over the loss of First Customer, and he objectively knows it’s not his fault, but he can’t help but feel like it is.

Harry’s a bit wired to always feel guilty, it seems.

On Saturday, the bakery is closed, but Harry goes in there anyway, in the afternoon, and he decides to try out some new recipes just to have something to do before the second meeting of the week.

While he does, he listens to Ed Sheeran, and he sighs a little to himself, remembering that Zayn fixed his music app for him. Harry’s gaze lands on the ingredients for the lemon filling, and he has an idea.

Maybe it’s stupid, but maybe it’s not.

So he nods to himself, and he bakes one single lemon pastry, taking care of making it a bit bigger, and a bit softer, and a bit sweeter.

+

Harry sets his backpack on the floor, against his own chair, and hopes the pastry doesn’t get too squished as everybody forms the usual circle in the meeting room.

Saturday meetings are directed by a guy called Michael, and he’s also very sweet, same as Katherine, although he doesn’t put empty chairs in the circle for eventual newcomers.

Zayn isn’t there. Maybe he won’t ever come back, now that he knows Harry’s there. But Harry takes a moment to put a couple empty chairs in their circle anyway. Janet and Paul smile at him, and help.

Harry’s heart does a small somersault, well into the meeting, when the door opens, and Zayn shows up. _He came back_, he thinks, avoiding any eye contact with him.

“Um, sorry I’m late,” Zayn says awkwardly, and Harry hears the slide of one of the empty chairs as he sits down.

“It’s alright,” Michael replies.

They only have ten minutes left, so Zayn just stays there for the last story of the night.

It’s a new girl who speaks. She doesn’t say her name, but Harry pays attention to what she says anyway. She looks very young, in her early twenties, and her expression is blank while she opens her mouth and talks. “My little brother died of cancer four years ago. He was thirteen. He had accepted it. I never did. That’s all I have, to be honest.”

It’s short, and yet it hits Harry deep in his heart. Because it doesn’t matter _how_, does it? What matters is that someone you loved is gone, and you’re left on Earth to deal with it. And if you don’t manage, you never recover.

It’s the shittiest feeling in the world.

Nobody replies to the girl’s short—and yet no less heart-breaking than others—story, as often happens. The meetings are not to look for advice, most of the time. They exist to let you speak, and be heard.

When it’s over, Harry sees Zayn stand up and go out of the room, without speaking to anyone, although in much less haste than the first time.

Harry takes a breath, and follows him.

He thought Zayn would just walk away, so he’s a bit taken aback when he sees him just a little further away in the alley, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. Harry thinks his hands are kinda shaking, but he’s not running, so it has to count for something.

_Who have you lost? Are you as heartbroken as I am? Will we get better?_, Harry thinks.

The girl had said that her little brother had accepted his own fate, while she never did, even if four years had passed. There really are no guarantees about that, it seems.

But Zayn is still there, still not running away, and he looks up at Harry with a small, almost non-existent smile, and Harry baked a pastry for him. It has to count for something, those two little gestures in a sea of regrets and loss.

So Harry takes another deep breath, and joins Zayn by the concrete wall, his backpack clutched in his hands and the weird plea of _please don’t be squished please be still fluffy and cute_ in his head.

“Hi,” Harry says, smiling a little himself.

Zayn smiles back, and he crushes the almost finished cigarette with the sole of his boot. “Hey,” he replies, very lowly. “Uh, sorry. That I ran away last time. And that I didn’t show up at the bakery again. I dunno, maybe you haven’t even noticed, thinking about it.”

Harry shakes his head. “I did. I’m sorry if I did anything to upset you. It wasn’t, um, it wasn’t my intention.”

“No!” Zayn exclaims, raising his hands. “You, fuck, you didn’t do anything. It was just, it was a lot? I never wanted to try this kind of meetings. And then I heard you talk about it with your friend and you looked kinda _okay_, so I thought I’d give one a try, but I didn’t know the organisation I found would be the same you go to, so it took me a little by surprise, and I felt a bit overwhelmed, and sorry I’m rambling.”

Harry chuckles. Zayn has spoken really quickly, without raising his eyes from the ground where his crushed cigarette stub is still emitting the thinnest line of smoke, and Harry can feel his discomfort.

“I try to be okay. I manage most of the time. Sometimes I don’t,” Harry replies, without delving further into the matter because he isn’t ready, not in the slightest. “Wait,” he adds, and rummages through his backpack.

He heaves a relieved sigh when he sees that the small carton package is indeed not squished. He takes it out of the backpack and gives it to Zayn, who accepts it with a frown. “What’s this?” he asks.

Harry smiles some more. “Open it,” he just says.

Zayn obeys, and Harry thoroughly enjoys the realization spreading over his lovely facial features as he reveals the lemon pastry. Zayn stares at it, smiles an eye-crinkling smile that gives Harry a bit of a heartache, and then he looks at Harry in the eyes. “Thanks. I’ve kinda missed these in the last two days.”

Harry grins. “I knew that. I’m just _that _good,” he says in a tone of fake superiority. “And this is gonna be better. Especially made for you and all.”

Zayn stutters something, and then he breaks the pastry in half, being careful not to lose any cream from the inside, and hands Harry one piece. “’S weird if I eat alone and someone watches me,” he shrugs, “and I wanna eat this right the fuck now.”

Harry snorts, and takes the half pastry. They grin at each other, and take a bite at the same time.

+

Nothing much happens between them for the next days. Not that Harry wanted the pastry to be the start of something or anything. He just did it because the sad expression on Zayn’s face at that first meeting had broken his heart.

Zayn comes back to the bakery at his usual time, on Monday, and they talk a little, although most of the time they just smile at each other. Zayn also orders a chai latte with the lemon pastry, and he stays a bit longer than usual at the bakery before going to work, or whatever it is he does. Harry still doesn’t know.

It’s enough, though. Harry feels drawn to Zayn a little bit more every passing minute, but he’d never say it out loud.

He knows he has issues, and he knows Zayn must have issues of his own, if he needs the meetings.

They never talk about that, either.

+

Zayn shows up on time for the next meeting the following Wednesday night. Harry sees him quietly enter the room, and he waves a little at him, gesturing to the free pastries and coffee on the table next to which he’s talking to Janet, Paul and Katherine.

Zayn sees him and smiles, going straight for him and hugging him without a single thought given, apparently. Harry feels his heart flutter a little as he wraps his arms around Zayn’s middle in return, and Janet and Paul look at each other with a little grin Harry perfectly notices.

When Harry and Zayn disentangle, Janet and Paul shake hands with Zayn and introduce themselves.

Zayn knows by that point that he’s not bound to do the same, and nobody is gonna bat an eyelash if he doesn’t tell them his name.

Nonetheless, Zayn still smiles. “I’m Zayn,” he just says.

The meeting goes well, or better, it goes as good as an hour filled with regrets and loss can go. Zayn sits next to Harry, this time, instead of across from him, and there’s more people who come during the meeting, so at some point the circle is a bit crammed, and Harry starts to feel very conscious about Zayn’s leg pressed against his own, warmth radiating between them.

“I lost my sister to her violent husband,” a nameless man says. “I told her to leave him so many times. She didn’t listen to me. One night, he got too violent, and she got too scared, so she called me. I heard a big commotion, and then she stopped speaking. I ran to her house as fast as I could. When I got there, I realized he’d pushed her, and she’d hit her head on the corner of a table. She died in my arms, and I could do nothing about it. Nothing but watch her bleed out, and know the ambulance was not gonna make it in time to save her. There was blood all around, on the floor, on my hands. Sometimes I still see it even though I’ve washed my hands and clothes a thousand times in the last month. And the fact that her husband went to jail isn’t any consolation to me. Nothing is.”

Harry keeps his eyes on the floor, tormenting the rings on his fingers, because he feels dangerously close to crying. There’s just so many things in that man’s tale, so many things Harry can relate to. The blood. Being able to do nothing but watch. It feels like his stomach is closing off for good, and so is his throat, a lump obstructing it when he tries to gulp down and get rid of the tears.

He keeps twisting and turning the rings on his fingers until they burn. Then, a gentle hand comes to rest on his own, stopping him. Harry doesn’t raise his eyes, but he doesn’t need to, because he knows who’s sitting next to him, and he also knows whose hands are tattooed that way, with small lines and dots of mandalas up until the knuckles, and rings of his own.

Zayn doesn’t remove his hand from Harry’s, and Harry doesn’t look at him.

But it must count for something.

Only at the end, when the meeting’s over, does Zayn free Harry’s hands from his gentle grip. Harry stands up and looks at him, feeling a bit calmer and more settled, and Zayn just smiles. “Alright, babe?” he asks Harry, almost in a whisper.

Harry is about to have a stroke at that pet name, but he manages to just nod. “Yeah. Thanks. It, uh, it got me a little.”

Zayn nods too. “It’s okay. Do you, like, do you wanna go grab a bite? I’m starving,” he says, blinking and blushing, Harry can see it even under his stubble.

How did his night go from crying over someone else’s loss to being invited out by his very own handsome First Customer?

Harry doesn’t dwell on that. “Yeah,” he replies, “Yeah, I’m starving too.”

They get out of the school and start walking without saying much, but that’s not new, nor awkward. Harry thinks they haven’t ever said much to each other, not even in the past week since they actually introduced themselves, and certainly not in the six months before, in which Zayn came regularly to the bakery. And yet, it’s never been awkward or weird, that they can just be in each other’s proximity and enjoy the silence.

Harry is trying to make things count for themselves, and this also has to count for something, that they don’t feel the need to speak, and that they don’t know much about each other, but they can still _share _something more and deeper than a lemon pastry.

“Are you sure you’re up for it?” Zayn asks while they walk. “Don’t you, like, have to wake up at arse o’ clock for the bakery?”

Harry laughs. “How do you know?”

“You have to have been there for hours before I show up, to have all those fresh things ready,” Zayn shrugs.

Harry nods. “Yeah, I don’t sleep much. It’s not the bakery, though, it’s just me,” he replies. “So I make good use of the extra time. But it’s fine, actually, the bakery’s gonna be closed tomorrow. I have this thing my Mum’s friend asked my help with.”

It’s true. The daughter of one of Anne’s friends is getting married the next day, and Anne had hit Harry with the full power of her own dimples and puppy eyes to ask him if he would go to the wedding and take their pictures in church and at the reception. Harry had almost thrown a strop at the thought of having to keep the bakery closed for a full day to do that, but in the end, Harry’s love for his Mum had won, and he’d said yes.

“Oh,” Zayn says, and he looks kinda bummed. “Okay. I’ll try to survive my lemon pastry cravings,” he adds with a small grin. “How do you make them? They’re so good, Harry.”

Harry grins too. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you,” he smirks. “Secret recipe. But the main ingredient is a lot of love.”

It’s not even that secret of a recipe, but it’s fun to pretend that it is. Harry realizes he’s fucking _flirting _with Zayn Malik, and he should stop. But again, should he stop? Zayn doesn’t seem bothered, and he either hasn’t understood, or he doesn’t find it annoying.

Harry trips over his own feet while he has his internal monologue, and Zayn snorts a laugh, grabbing him by an arm. “I swear you’re a klutz,” Zayn sighs, “Every time you come out of that kitchen with all those hot trays I fear for your life.”

_He watched me, he observed me, I wasn’t the only one staring_, is all Harry can think. “I’ll have you know I’m extremely graceful in the bakery’s setting, because I know my way around it,” he replies.

Zayn chuckles. “Yeah, whatever you say, babe.”

_Is he flirting too? Am I going crazy? Is this okay? Maybe it is?_

Zayn points at a diner when they reach a corner, but at a quick inspection it reveals itself to be full, with no seats available, and the same goes for three more diners and pubs they pass by on their way to… where?

Zayn sighs. “It’s way past eleven on a weekend. I don’t think we’re gonna have any luck unless we get takeaway and eat it somewhere like two homeless people,” he tells Harry. “I walked here, so I don’t even have my car to go somewhere further away. Sorry about that.”

Harry hums, and then he decides to test his luck, because he’s feeling kinda positive. “My, uh, my bakery is quite close. What do you say we go, and I make us something to eat there?”

Zayn blinks a couple times, his mouth a bit open, and Harry curses himself, quickly trying to amend whatever it is he said. “Only if you want to! It’s fine if you don’t. It was just an idea, to, like, make sure we don’t starve, but…”

Zayn smiles. “Okay, Harry, yeah, I like your not-starving idea. But can you throw a lemon pastry in the mix? I gotta make up for the lost pastry of tomorrow.”

He says it with such a serious, low tone that Harry takes a moment to register what he really means, and that he’s joking. Zayn bursts out laughing, and so does Harry. “Yes, Zayn, I can bake you a fucking lemon pastry. I’ll even give you a cute carton with the logo of the bakery. My friend Liam made ‘em. He’s _sick_.”

+

It’s not weird for Harry, to get inside the bakery at almost midnight, but it feels kinda strange that he’s not alone. He would normally just blindly find his way towards the kitchen, but seeing that Zayn is also there, Harry turns on the lights.

He closes the door, locking it because you never know, and then opens the small divider of the counter, gesturing for Zayn to go first. Zayn smiles and does, looking around like he’s never seen the bakery before. He’s never seen it from _that _side, Harry guesses.

“Why’d you call it _Honeybuns_?” Zayn asks as they make their way into the kitchen.

Harry clears his throat and stops staring at Zayn, he really does. “My, my sister used to call me that when we were little,” he replies.

Zayn nods, and then he takes one more look around the kitchen, taking in the small marble countertops, the three ovens, the two fridges covered in pictures. Harry sees him smile while he observes them. “These pictures are really good. You take them?”

Harry nods, feeling his cheeks get warmer. This Zayn really is something else, isn’t he? Harry is never _shy _with fit blokes. He’s the opposite of shy. Maybe Niall is right to make fun of him for his crush on First Customer. “I have a degree in photography,” Harry says reluctantly, “I know it’s stupid, that I decided to just fuck off and open a bakery, but…”

Zayn shakes his head and doesn’t even let Harry finish. “It’s not stupid. I heard what you said to your friend, about people not understanding and making fun of you. _They’re _stupid. If you hold this place dear, then there’s nothing stupid about,” he says firmly.

Harry smiles, and then goes to rummage in one of the fridges to take out the ingredients for a quick pie. “What do you do?” he asks Zayn.

Zayn hums. “I’ve got a degree in film making. Haven’t put that to good use, though. Unless you count a couple music videos for unknown bands and singers, and filming ceremonies for rich people.”

Harry chuckles. “Well, it’s something at least, isn’t it? Baby steps. Like for everything else,” he replies.

Zayn doesn’t say anything, but he gets closer to Harry as he puts oil in a pan and starts chopping some aubergines. “Can I help?” Zayn asks, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “My Mum never lets me help in the kitchen, she says I’m a menace. But I learn quickly I swear!”

Harry laughs, because Zayn looks just like a toddler in that moment, if not for the fact that he’s very fit and _very close_. “Do you know how to make bechamel sauce?” he asks Zayn.

Zayn stutters. “Eh, like, there has to be milk, I think?”

Harry laughs, openly this time, but then he decides to let Zayn try anyway, and if his kitchen burns down, Niall made sure Harry has an amazing insurance. “A hundred grams of butter. Scale’s on top of the fridge. You melt it in a pot, and then you add a hundred grams of flour and stir very quickly to avoid making clumps. In the meantime, take a milk carton from the second fridge over there and put it in another pot, low heat, and warm it up. Then you add the milk to the butter and flour thingie, and you keep stirring.”

Zayn listens carefully and then turns to retrieve the ingredients and do as Harry said. Harry watches him with the corner of his eye as he takes care of cooking the aubergines, but Zayn doesn’t seem to have any problems as he follows Harry’s instructions.

Soon enough, the bechamel sauce is coming, and Harry makes quick work of the pie dough he already had in the fridge, giving it a circular shape.

It feels… _nice_, cooking with someone. It’s been ages since Harry was at the stoves with someone, exchanging jokes and mindless conversations about fuck all. Harry shakes his head a little, because he doesn’t want to go down that particular memory lane, not tonight when he’s having a nice time and probably-flirting with a nice guy he doesn’t necessarily want to fuck and then forget about.

When everything is done, Harry dips the aubergines into the bechamel sauce pot, and then stirs. He looks at Zayn and hands him a scoop, with a grin. “Wanna have the honour of filling the pie?” he asks.

Zayn chuckles. “How much do you care about the filling not being even?”

Harry shrugs. “It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be good and fill your stomach and make you happy,” he replies, and his insides twist a little, because that’s not what he planned on saying, but it came out anyway.

Harry feels his throat close off a little, but Zayn is still smiling, and he grabs the scoop from Harry’s hand. “Okay then,” he says.

He concentrates more than actually necessary as he scoops the filling and spreads it into the pie dough, with his tongue poking out of his lips a little, and Harry really wants to taste it. He doesn’t, and forces himself to calm down, but it’s always been a bit of a fantasy of his, cooking with someone and then making out in the mess afterwards, and both he and Zayn are quite a mess right now.

Zayn has flour and a milk stain on his black t-shirt, a series of bread crumbs in his hair (they didn’t even use bread, but sometimes you get dirty with impossible things in a kitchen), and his eyelashes are very long as he stares down at their creation and finishes filling it.

Harry chuckles, dipping his fingers in a little flour before taking the dough stripes and attaching them on top of the pie in a crisscross pattern, so that it will look at least a little nice, too. _It can be both good and pretty, Gems_, he thinks with a smile.

Once the pie’s in the oven, Zayn still looks jittery and expectant, like he wants to cook something else. Harry rolls his eyes, remembering about the fucking lemon pastry, and then grins. “Pie’s got to be in the oven for half an hour. Wanna learn how to make the lemon pastries?”

Zayn gapes. “You said it’s a secret!”

“I was joking, Zayn. It’s literally the stupidest, easiest thing I’ve ever baked. I learned from my Mum when I was eleven.”

“Oh” Zayn blushes. It’s cute. Zayn’s cute.

Harry hip-checks him because he can’t help it, and takes out the ingredients for the lemon cream inside, and the mixer, the whisk, the sugar and all the rest they need.

“That’s a lot of things for the _stupidest, easiest thing you’ve ever baked_,” Zayn comments.

Harry laughs. “It’s easy. Come here.”

Harry shows Zayn everything in great detail. How to whisk the eggs just right so that the cream will have its fluffy texture, how to be gentle with the puff pastry so it will be crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside without breaking. Zayn nods and stays focused, making a mess of the whisked eggs and breaking the puff pastry three times, but he doesn’t give up. In the end, they have four pastries lined on the oven tray, three of which look wobbly and a bit too big. Harry thinks they’re cute anyway.

“They look like they’ve got the black plague,” Zayn mutters.

Harry chuckles. “It’s got to be good, not pretty,” he reminds Zayn, flicking his nose with his finger before he can realize what the fuck he’s doing.

Zayn scrunches his face and sticks out his tongue at Harry.

_Maybe it does get a bit easier with time_, Harry thinks. Because he’s thought about Gemma quite a lot that night, but it doesn’t hurt, or better, it does, but it’s more of a dull sort of ache, and not a heart-breaking, throat-cutting pain every time he’s forced to say her name.

Harry hasn’t been forced to say anything, and yet he’s told Zayn about what Gemma said, the nickname she had for him, and it feels a bit easier to speak, that night.

Maybe it’s Zayn. Maybe it’s the bakery. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Harry smiles and sets the pastries in the second oven, and then sighs contently, looking at Zayn again. He’s got sugar crumbs all over his nose, from when Harry flicked his nose a handful of minutes earlier.

“You have sugar on your nose,” Harry says, and miraculously manages not to rolls his eyes at himself for how nauseatingly cliché the scene feels.

Zayn keeps staring at Harry, and then, without interrupting their eye-contact, he strokes his nose from the tip downwards, only managing to move the sugar crumbs lower, all over his lips.

Harry almost has a heart attack, because it’s too much of a deliberate movement to be an accident.

Zayn keeps staring at him, and his eyes are glinting a little, and his legs are shaking, like he’s bracing himself for a battle.

If this is Zayn’s idea of a fight, then Harry will plunge into battle first-in-line.

He takes a slow step forward. “You missed it,” he tells Zayn, in a whisper.

“Did I?” Zayn asks, with an innocent smile. “Help me, then.”

It’s disgustingly cliché, and yet Harry doesn’t want it to go any other way. He chuckles, and closes his lips around Zayn’s, very slowly, feeling the sweet taste of the sugar, and not daring to move more.

Zayn takes a sharp breath, and his hands grab Harry by the shoulders, but it feels more like he’s holding himself upright and steady, rather than like he wants to push him away or pull him closer.

Harry knows something about giving yourself time to process, so he stays with his lips on Zayn’s, motionless, until it’s Zayn who moves.

He sighs and moves his lips on Harry’s, sucking the bottom one into his plump mouth, and then, slowly, he opens up more, darting his tongue out to trace Harry’s cupid’s bow. Harry sighs too, getting closer to Zayn and opening his mouth as well, until their tongues are entwined and the kiss gets more heated, quicker, rougher. Harry’s heart hammers its way out of his chest when Zayn’s hands tighten on his shoulders to haul him even closer, and Zayn has his eyes closed, with his eyelashes tickling Harry’s cheeks. Harry raises a hand to wrap it on one side of Zayn’s face, and their mouths keep sucking at each other’s lips, and Zayn tastes of sugar and lemon, because he stole the cream scooping it up with his pointer finger and Harry had pretended not to notice.

They don’t do anything else but snog in the middle of the kitchen, covered in sugar and flour, until they’re brought back to the real world by the loud ding of the oven where the pie is ready.

Zayn gasps, interrupting the kiss and starting like he can’t believe what’s happening.

He keeps standing there, his eyes darting left and right, his expression shocked and aghast, breaking Harry’s heart a little.

Zayn opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. It doesn’t need to, though, because Harry can understand what’s on Zayn’s face. _He’s not ready. He let himself go but he’s not there yet. He needs time_.

Harry does the only sensible thing he can. He smiles at Zayn, gently knocking their foreheads together while Zayn still looks like a deer caught in headlights. “It’s okay, Zayn,” Harry whispers. “If you don’t want to, if you’re not ready, we don’t have to do anything more. We don’t even have to do _this _again. You’re fine. Breathe,” he adds, because Zayn feels a breath away from hyperventilating.

Zayn nods, frantically and convulsively, but he doesn’t get away from Harry. Instead, he covers Harry’s hand on his face with his own, like he wants to keep it there, and then he closes his eyes, taking another sharp breath. “It’s not… it’s not that I don’t want to,” he just says before the words fail him.

Harry nods too. “It’s okay. Just… Zayn?”

Zayn hums, his eyes closed again.

“Don’t disappear. Don’t stop coming here to the bakery. And, don’t stop coming to the meetings,” Harry says, slowly. “Whatever it is you need to work out, my lemon pastries and other people’s stories will help you. You’re not alone in this, and neither am I.”

It’s true. They never spoke about their own loss, but it can’t be a mystery, that they both lost someone. They have to, otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting in that circle twice a week. So, it’s risky to say it so bluntly when Zayn looks like he’s about to have a breakdown, but Harry can’t help starting to address the elephant in the room.

Zayn understands, because he nods, pressing Harry’s hand into his cheek more firmly. “Okay,” he says, “I won’t stop coming. If you don’t stop making those pastries.”

Harry chuckles. “I swear on all my baking diplomas that I won’t,” he assures.

Zayn chuckles too, taking a couple quieter breaths, and then he just moves slightly, to give Harry a peck on the lips, the smallest one, but it still has to count for something. “Cheers, babe. For understanding even if I can’t say anything yet.”

“We never said much to each other, and yet we’re still peachy,” Harry replies honestly. “There are things we can keep close to our hearts until we need to, babe. I understand, and you understand too.”

Zayn nods, and they stay like that, silent and motionless, until Harry has to go take the pie out of the oven before it burns.

+

_I don’t know why I let my mum win this one_, Harry texts Zayn as he wears one of his least flashy suits, which admittedly is still very flashy.

They’ve exchanged numbers the night before, when they had dinner and then Harry sent Zayn off with a box of not-so-pretty-but-good pastries.

They didn’t kiss again, except that small peck on the lips Zayn gave Harry in thanks for understanding something he couldn’t explicitly say, and another small peck when they said goodnight.

All in all, Harry thinks they’re fine. Some things take time per se. With two people like _them_, with loss and regret over their shoulders on a daily basis, it will probably take even more time than normal.

Because Harry could do the mindless hook-ups, the sex with strangers, but even that had gotten to a point it wasn’t satisfying anymore, not physically and certainly not morally.

Zayn feels different. Zayn knows what Harry feels, even if they don’t know _who _and _how _the other lost. The concept is the same, and Harry feels like he wants to give time to this, because he doesn’t want to fuck it up.

Zayn replies to his text as he gets in the car with his Mum, and she drives off to the church. _Ahah yea it’s really early for me too but I guess this is like noon for you, babe_

Harry chuckles. Zayn’s right, because it’s seven, so Harry even slept _more _than he normally does. _I’d rather have woken up at 5 as usual but be in the bakery rn_

_I’d rather you be in the bakery rn too. It feels weird going to work without having had breakfast there_, Zayn replies.

Harry smiles, and he’s typing a question for Zayn, _what kind of thing u working on today?_, but his mother clears her throat very loudly with a grin before he can hit send.

Harry rolls his eyes. “What?”

“You’re chuckling fondly.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Anne insists, “Who is he?”

Harry rolls his eyes again and then hits send on the text for Zayn before locking his phone’s screen. “No one. A regular at the bakery. He’s nice. We’re not going out or anything,” Harry tells her, because if not even Harry and Zayn know where this is going, there’s no point in getting his Mum’s hopes up. “I ran into him at one of the meetings, too, and we started talking a little.”

Anne’s face sobers up immediately, but she still gives Harry a small smile. “How are you feeling, sweetie? You holding up fine?”

Harry sighs. “Yeah. The meetings help.”

Anne smiles sadly. Harry thinks she doesn’t really believe him on that one, and that she’d rather have made sure he was fine by making him continue his therapy even when it wasn’t necessary anymore in the therapist’s opinion. But Harry can’t blame her for her worries. She’s been there all along, and she’s witnessed Harry’s spiralling down, first-hand. Together with her own, Harry thinks sometimes, because when you’re hurting, it’s easy to forget you’re not the only one. The meetings gave him a new perspective on that as well.

So he sighs and delicately strokes one of his mother’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I never ask _you _how you are, Mum,” he says, as sincerely as he can.

Anne chuckles. “I’m your mother, baby. It’s my job to ask the question. Repeatedly. Until you roll your eyes at me.”

Harry laughs. “You make it so easy,” he agrees. “But how are you, Mum?”

Anne sighs. “My chin is up, love. Always is.”

+

Harry feels his phone buzz with a reply from Zayn, but he doesn’t have time to read it, because as soon as he and Anne get inside the church, Harry is attacked by the bride’s mother and five other ladies, shouting at him to get this flower, that statue, that perspective in his pictures.

Harry’s lower eyelid twitches, and he’d very much like to tell them “If you already know what to do, why don’t you take the pics yourselves?”, but he doesn’t, because the bride’s mother is friends with _his _mother, and he’s a good son, kind to his Mum’s friends.

So he smiles and nods at the ‘suggestions’ until they finally let him go.

The church is almost full, with the groom standing by the foot of the altar and probably freaking the fuck out, if his pale complexion is any indication. Harry chuckles, and takes pictures of him anyway, trying to get the right angle so that his scared expression will look like just anticipation.

When the organist starts playing the march, Harry settles by the first row of benches, so that he’s able to catch various frames of the bride walking down the aisle with her father.

It breaks his heart a little, that he’ll never be able to take this kind of pictures for Gemma, but he pushes the thought back by shaking his head.

When the father symbolically hands over the bride to the groom, and the couple stands in front of the priest, Harry gets a sick perspective of both of them smiling, with a Virgin Mary statue and some flowers on the background.

Just when he’s about to shoot the picture of their fucking lives, the guy with the camcorder gets in his line of sight, _invading _Harry’s background.

Harry has to do his best not to shout at him to find his own spot to work. He lowers his camera to glare at him, and the lad probably thinks the same about Harry, because he’s also glaring when he lowers his own device.

And then Harry has to do his best not to fucking _laugh_, because the camcorder bloke is _Zayn_.

They stare at each other, silently giggling with a hand covering their mouth, and after that they manage to be kind to each other and not invade each other’s creative space.

They also spend most of their time looking at each other. Harry desperately wants to go over to him and hug him, because he looks so soft in his skinnies and sweater, so Harry feels like he has to take Zayn away and just wrap him in a blanket and give him small pecks on the lips like the night before.

But they’re always stuck at opposite corners of the church until the ceremony’s over. Harry wonders if Zayn has been hired for the reception as well. He hopes so. It’ll be so much more bearable if Zayn’s there.

Harry catches Zayn pointing his camera at _him _while he shakes his hair and combs it backwards with his fingers. He looks around before flipping him off behind a flower vase, and Zayn snorts a laugh, promptly simulating a coughing fit afterwards.

Harry takes pictures of Zayn as well, though. At the end of the ceremony he probably has something like ten pictures of Zayn, with his camcorder covering his face, with the camera slung on his neck while he gets distracted by a flower, while he smiles directly into Harry’s camera from afar, his teeth all on display and his eyes crinkled.

The ceremony is finally over at some point, and Harry precedes the bride and groom outside so that he can take pictures of them coming out of the church. Zayn has the same idea, and they find themselves side to side at the end of the steps of the church entrance. “Don’t steal my light, Styles,” Zayn murmurs with a grin, his face in the camera.

Harry scoffs. “I don’t need your light, I make my own, Malik.”

Zayn snorts and then openly laughs. “Please tell me you have to do the reception as well, I’m gonna die.”

Harry takes a relieved breath. “Bride’s Mum is my Mum’s friend, Zayn. Of course I gotta do the whole fucking reception too.”

“Sick,” Zayn grins, “Wanna go with my car?”

+

Robin has joined Anne in the church halfway through the ceremony, because he’s always late, so Harry knows he won’t leave his mother alone in the car if he goes with Zayn. He quickly tells her that the video-camera lad is a friend of his, and that he has more space for his equipment—which is a blatant lie because Harry doesn’t even have that much equipment—and then kisses her on the forehead and runs towards the black car next to which Zayn is smoking, his sunglasses covering his eyes and his topknot shining with some kind of gel.

“I feel underdressed,” Zayn comments, pulling a little at one of the lapels of Harry’s suit jacket. “Do you always wear Gucci when they want you as a photographer?”

Harry chuckles. “I’m the photographer but my mother is a guest, I couldn’t let her deal with people thinking her only child is a slob,” he replies, and nausea rises up his throat when he realizes what he’s said.

Zayn must realize too, because he freezes for a moment, his cigarette forgotten, and he avoids Harry’s gaze. Harry is about to amend it, correct it, just lie if it means not speaking about something he doesn’t want to speak about, _can’t _speak about.

But Zayn understands, is the thing. Because then he just smiles, and pulls at the lapel of Harry’s jacket again. “The photographer wearing a Gucci suit, red with green and purple flowers, and the cameraman in skinny jeans and an Adidas sweater. Just imagine if someone takes a pic of _us_.”

Harry chuckles. “Thanks,” he just says, and he doesn’t mean the compliment or the joke per se, but Zayn’s attempt to change a subject Harry inadvertently opened.

Zayn looks around. All the cars are gone from the church parking lot, following the bride and groom to the reception place. Zayn smiles and then leans forward, giving Harry a small peck on the lips. “You’re fine, babe,” he says, whispers it on Harry’s lips. “Shall we?”

Harry nods.

They get in Zayn’s car, and Zayn starts the engine, turning on the radio as well and grinning at Harry when Ed Sheeran starts to sing. Harry chuckles. “You don’t… _look _like an Ed Sheeran fan?” he tries.

Zayn laughs. “Don’t tell anybody,” he stage-whispers. “I have an R&B-listener reputation I gotta keep.”

+

Zayn and Harry don’t even have time to look at each other when the reception starts, because it’s a blur of taking pictures and videos of the newly wedded couple, photographing them with family and friends, getting good shots of the artfully crafted entrance buffet.

Zayn manages to send a couple tortured glances at Harry from across the wide room, and Harry makes silly faces at him in-between one pic by the pool and the other, but that’s it, until people finally sit at their assigned tables and start to eat.

Harry has his spot next to his mother and Robin, at a table with three more people he doesn’t know and who don’t seem interested in speaking to him after he introduces himself. After he sits down, he takes a look around and finds Zayn still standing, walking around the room and studying the framed pictures on the walls.

Harry frowns. Everybody is sitting, and Zayn is not recording anything in that moment, the camera hanging from his neck with the shutter closed. It dawns on him, and he can’t help an affronted gasp. “They didn’t give him a _seat_?” he hisses.

His mother sighs. “No, I think they didn’t, baby. I was talking to Jennifer and she said she thought he wouldn’t need it since he has to work.”

“What’s he gonna do, eat standing?” Harry rolls his eyes, and then gets up to get a hold of a waiter and ask him to please put one more chair at their table. The waiter doesn’t seem to have any problems with that, and he disappears in another room right away.

Harry sighs, and walks over to Zayn, tapping him on the shoulder. Zayn turns immediately, trying to chew quicker on the bite he got from the plate he’s holding. “Oh, it’s you,” he says rolling his eyes, “I thought it was the bride’s Mum asking me to please take videos while I ate.”

Harry snorts a laugh. “No, it’s me. Come sit with me and my parents. I had them bring out a fucking chair for you,” he says a bit angrily.

Zayn finally manages to gulp down his mouthful and blinks. “Oh, no, Haz, it’s not a prob…”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Harry interrupts him raising a hand. “My table. Now. We can keep working _after _we eat like normal people, cheers.”

Zayn stares at Harry for a moment, and then smiles, nodding and following Harry. For good measure, they stop at the long buffet table and fill two more plates, stuffing them with food because Harry tells Zayn “For how shit I’m sure they’re paying you, I want you to eat all their fucking food”.

Zayn chuckles at that and makes a comment about Harry caring about cameramen rights, and Harry lightly kicks him in the shin. They make their way to Harry’s table, and Harry sits down after Zayn.

“Mum, Robin, this is my friend Zayn,” he says, “Zayn, this is Anne, my Mum, and Robin, my stepdad.”

Zayn smiles and cordially shakes hands with both of them, then introduces himself to the other three guests at their table. They politely shake hands and then resume their ignoring of Harry, and now Zayn, starting a conversation with Anne and Robin about their work.

“Wonderful,” Zayn comments low in Harry’s ear, as he leans over to grab a hold of the water bottle in the middle of the table.

Harry chuckles. “Well at least my Mum is busy talking to them and she won’t grill you about who you are, what you do, how you’re friends with me, what we did for our first date, when we plan on having children. The usual, you know.”

Zayn giggles a little, deciding to forgo the water and grab the wine instead, and he fills both his glass and Harry’s before gesturing to Anne and Robin, who both smile and nod. Zayn fills their glasses as well.

“Oh well, if she asks,” Zayn whispers to Harry, “we can tell her our first date was very chaste and in the bakery’s kitchen.”

Harry feels his stomach tighten a little in arousal at the memory of that first—and only—real kiss they shared the day before, and also at the way Zayn’s breath tickles his ear as he speaks. “Oh? Was it a date? I didn’t notice,” he replies with a grin, “I was too busy making sure you didn’t burn my kitchen down.”

Zayn grins too, and arches an eyebrow, biting down on a slice of a very fancy and not-that-well-filled pie. “But I learn quickly. I made bechamel sauce all by myself.”

Harry hums. “Eh, okay, I’ll give you that. Next step is mayonnaise then.”

Zayn laughs and nods, and then raises his glass a little towards Harry. Harry grins and clinks his own against Zayn’s.

When they’re done, Harry clearly sees his mother and Robin stare at him and Zayn, which he pointedly ignores.

They eat a lot, and when they’re done with the first course after the buffet, Zayn looks at Harry and drinks the last sip from his wineglass. “I think we should go take some shots of the outside setting?” he says. “I mean, I have to, they look cool when I assemble the film.”

Harry manages to hold back his grin, and nods. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. Let’s go then.”

They excuse themselves from the table with a “Work calls”, and Harry can’t help winking at his mother when he sees how knowingly she’s staring at him. Robin shakes his head with an arched eyebrow and a grin of his own, and Harry briefly wonders if they’re just thinking Harry’s planning on hooking up with the cameraman. He hasn’t exactly told his mother that Zayn is the bloke they were talking about in the car, and Harry probably got quite the rep with his family as well, with all the partying and the going out he used to do until a while ago.

He shrugs, deciding to take care of explaining things later, when he’ll have explanations for himself as well.

Harry and Zayn don’t talk much as they wander along the pool, taking shots of the water illuminated by the small, blue LED lights in the bottom; they walk through the sunbeds scattered around it, Zayn sitting on one of them to record the fake waves, while Harry sits across from him, doing the same with a pic and then taking another one of Zayn surrounded by fairy lights and plants, the camera rested on his knees and his eyes flitting over the garden on their right.

The sun has set, and Harry checks his watch. They only have half an hour to go before the wedding cake will be brought out and it’s gonna be chaos again. For now, though, he enjoys the quiet of the outside, where he can hear the sloshing of the pool water and Zayn’s quiet breathing whenever they pass each other to go photograph and record another corner.

They’re both standing by an orchid plant in the garden when a group of quite loud ladies shows up, champagne glasses in hand and flowy dresses rustling as they make their way on pointy heels.

Harry recognizes one of them as the lady sitting at his and his parents’ table, the one who ignored him in favour of just speaking to Anne. He rolls his eyes at Zayn, but the group doesn’t pay them much mind.

“I think she’s fine,” the lady says shrugging, “I mean, she’s there smiling and laughing, so how bad can she be?”

Another woman sighs. “Yeah, maybe. Such a tragedy, though. And the brother, poor boy. I’m told he was right there when it happened, and he needed months and months of therapy afterwards, still does. I don’t even know how they manage to get out of the house, to be honest.”

Harry feels his legs start to shake, and he grips his camera tightly, so tightly he’s afraid of breaking it, but he can’t bring himself to open his hands.

“He seems fine as well, though?” a third woman comments. “He’s the tall boy, the photographer. He looks good, all things considered. Maybe it’s really true that time heals all wounds, I mean, after witnessing such a…”

Zayn grabs Harry by an arm, and quickly starts pulling him through the garden, away from the group and what they’re saying. Harry opens his mouth to take a breath, but he fails. Zayn doesn’t look at him, not until they stop right in the middle of a small pathway through bushes and bushes of flowers Harry can’t look at.

When the voices are too distant to be heard, Zayn slowly takes Harry’s chin between his thumb and index, and makes him lift his head. For a wild, terrifying moment, Harry’s scared Zayn will demand explanations, because of course he understood those people were talking about him and his mother, it was clear, they even said “the photographer”, and they said he’s fine and his Mum is fine, but they aren’t, Harry isn’t, and he doesn’t know how to say it, his throat is constricting more and more, and…

“Harry. Breathe,” Zayn says, so low that Harry doesn’t really catch that.

He realizes that he’s murmuring something only when he strains to listen to what Zayn’s saying. A litany of “I’m not ready I’m not ready I can’t say it I can’t say it” is flowing out of his lips without his control.

Zayn shakes his head, and he gently knocks their foreheads together, like Harry did in the bakery the night before. “You don’t have to be ready, babe,” Zayn whispers. “And you don’t have to say it. Not until you feel like it. Take a breath, Harry, yeah? Breathe with me. You’re fine. It’s fine. We’re fine,”

Zayn inhales through his nose and then releases the breath through his mouth, warm air and smell of cigarettes slowly gushing over Harry’s nose, lips and cheeks.

Harry nods, and starts doing the same, inhaling and exhaling in sync with Zayn, their foreheads touching and Zayn’s hand on the right side of his face. At last, Harry’s breath calms down, quite quickly.

“How…” he tries to speak, but his voice breaks and he has to start again. “How did you do it?”

Zayn smiles. “My friend Louis. He’s ace at bringing me down from panic attacks before they fully hit me,” he tells Harry, still whispering. “Alright, babe?”

Harry shakes his head. “No, not really,” he says, because even though he’d very much like to lie and say yes, he finds that he can’t bring himself to lie to Zayn. “I’m not alright. There’s this… _thing_, inside me, and I can’t even say out loud what it is. I _miss her_, Zayn, I miss her so much it kills me sometimes,” he then admits, and it takes all Harry’s willpower to just say the word “her”.

Zayn nods, and he doesn’t ask Harry to explain further, because Zayn _knows_. “I miss _him _too, Harry,” he just replies. “And it’s okay if we’re not ready to speak about it, right? You said it. I understand, and you do as well. We’re alright _enough_, babe. We have to be.”

The moment feels too charged when Zayn says that, because that small, whispered “him” doesn’t bring any details with it, and yet it gives Harry confirmation of something he already suspected. That the person Zayn lost was a lover.

And the thing is that it doesn’t matter, even then. Because nothing matters, not who the person they lost was, and not even _how _they lost them, not really. Because the only important thing is that they miss _someone_, someone they loved, someone who won’t come back, and they have to keep going through the day knowing that they’re gone for good. When Harry thinks about this, he finds that all the other details and circumstances are not that important.

But Zayn is also right. Because they’re there and they’re fine, they have to be, and Harry is slowly breathing normally again, like Zayn did the night before when he was the one who was being overwhelmed by his own effort to force himself to be ready when he isn’t, not completely, not yet.

Harry had brought Zayn with his feet back on the ground, because that was what he needed, and now Zayn is doing the same for him, because he’s the one who needs it now.

They’re fine.

Harry nods, his forehead brushing Zayn’s where they’re touching. “Thanks. For understanding something I can’t really say yet.”

Zayn smiles. “I don’t need you to say it, babe. And _you _don’t need to say it, not until it feels right. I understand anyway, and you do too.”

Harry smiles a little, and Zayn nods before leaning forward and giving Harry a small peck on the lips. They stay there, with their lips touching but without really kissing, for a time that feels both too short and like infinity.

+

Harry takes a deep breath when he shoots the last pic of the bride and groom with family and cake. He disappears immediately with the excuse of having to put away his equipment, but as he rushes away with literally no destination, someone catches him by an arm.

Maybe he’s stupid or just losing his mind, because he knows it’s Zayn without even having to look.

“Babe?” Zayn says, his mouth tentatively brushing the shell of his ear. “Can you wait for me, and we go back together with my car? I’m… I’m not ready to let you go, tonight.”

Harry is nodding even before Zayn finishes his sentence, and he manages to smile a little as he takes the car keys Zayn is handing him.

He quickly finds his Mum and Robin, and he tells them not to worry about him, that he’s going back with Zayn.

Anne frowns, and she cups Harry’s face with her hands. “Are you okay, Harry? You look a little lost.”

Harry smiles. “I’m fine, Mum. Just tired. This wedding has been going on for almost sixteen hours now, it shouldn’t, like, be legal,” he replies, doing his best to roll his eyes.

Anne chuckles. “I dunno if I believe you, baby,” she sighs. “But I’m gonna let you go. Is this Zayn gonna take care of you a little bit?”

Harry smiles. “He already did, Mum. He already did,” he just answers, and then hugs her and Robin before they can ask any more questions.

On his way to where Zayn’s car is parked at the entrance of the villa where the reception has been held, he runs into the bride’s Mum and promises her to let her have the drafts of the pictures as soon as he can, so that she can decide which ones she wants to have printed out.

Then, he almost runs to Zayn’s car, setting his camera, tripod, umbrella and flash in the trunk before closing it and going inside, almost disappearing into the passenger seat for how much he slides down. He closes his eyes, taking some deep, calming breaths, and he manages to be partially collected by the time Zayn opens the trunk to store his own equipment, and then slides into the driver’s seat with a sigh.

“Alright, babe?” Zayn asks Harry, turning to look at him and chuckling when he sees Harry in that position.

Harry smiles and nods. “Yeah.”

“You doing yoga?”

“Hiding, more like,” Harry murmurs, but he rises up to sit like a normal human being in the end.

Zayn smiles, his hand carelessly—or carefully?—stroking Harry’s knee. “We can stop hiding now, it’s just us,” he says, and then fully turns his body to face Harry.

It’s weird, because everything is so dark, and the only source of light comes from a couple lamps installed along the entrance pathway of the villa. But Harry feels like he can’t tolerate any more light than that, for now, so he doesn’t complain about the darkness. “What do you need, Harry?” Zayn asks, seriously. “Do you wanna go to the bakery? Bake a thousand pastries? We can do that. Or do you just want me to put you to bed? We can do that too. Whatever you need. But I won’t leave you alone tonight.”

Harry nods. “Home. I wanna go home. Not the bakery, not tonight. My hands are too shaky,” he explains with a pitiful chuckle, “I’d fuck up anything I attempt. Can you bring me home, Zayn?”

Zayn nods, and hands Harry his phone. “Choose a playlist. And guide me to your place,” he just says.

They don’t speak at all on the ride back to Harry’s place.

But Harry finds he doesn’t mind the silence, as often happens with someone who understands as much as Zayn does.

+

Harry hasn’t had anyone over except Niall, Liam and his parents in over a year, he realizes as they get inside his apartment and he feels weird and strange having Zayn’s company.

He doesn’t give Zayn a tour of the house, hoping Zayn won’t mind, and he immediately climbs the stairs to his bedroom, the suit sticky and itchy around his shoulders and legs. Zayn follows him without saying a word, and when they get in Harry’s bedroom, Harry sees him stare at the pictures on the wall for a while, before looking like he has to forcibly tear his eyes off of them to look at Harry.

Harry understands, because now that Zayn has probably figured out who it is Harry lost, just as much as Harry now knows what kind of loss Zayn suffered, the pictures on the wall with Harry and Gemma must mean something else entirely to him. Harry doesn’t comment on that.

Instead, he addresses a more pressing matter. “Do you, uh, do you wanna sleep here?” he asks awkwardly. “You can if you want to. But I don’t have a guest room.”

Zayn chuckles, a bit embarrassed himself, and he scratches the back of his head. “I’m sorry to intrude. But yes, I wanna sleep here. I don’t feel like leaving you alone,” he says, more seriously. “I know you went all your life without my company. But now that I know you, I just don’t want to leave you.”

Harry nods, and he replies as honestly as he can. “Thanks. I don’t feel like being alone. And I also don’t feel like I want anyone else’s company,” he tells Zayn, and then rummages through his drawers until he produces a pair of sweats and a tank top. He hands them to Zayn. “Bathroom is at the end of this corridor. You can shower first,” he adds, managing a real smile.

Zayn smiles back and nods, accepting the clothes and going out of the room.

Harry takes off the suit when he’s alone, carefully hanging it and smoothing the crinkles. Then he sits on the bed in his underwear, and stares at the pictures on the wall.

Everyone’s there, but of course, Harry is only able to see the ones with Gemma.

Her graduation. Harry’s graduation. Anne and Robin’s wedding. Random days in random parks. Gemma driving with her mouth wide open as she sang something along the radio.

Harry brushes his face with his palms, and he tries to say her name to himself, three times. He chokes on it, and doesn’t manage. _Maybe my mother’s right. Maybe I needed more therapy._

It’s not true, though, because when Harry was in therapy, he managed to talk about Gemma and say her name and say what happened to his doctor. It’s like the block came afterwards, because it’s not really a block. It’s just that Harry _doesn’t want to_.

He keeps staring at Gemma’s photos, and he wonders if Zayn doesn’t want to say his dead lover’s name either. Maybe it’s a defence mechanism. Something not to uselessly hurt.

Harry is about to work himself into a state when he hears the faintest hint of a hummed song coming from the corridor. Before he can fully realize what the fuck he’s doing, he’s walking towards the bathroom, where Zayn has left the door half-opened, and he’s not really singing, just whispering some tune to himself.

Harry recognizes it as soon as he gets on the doorstep of the bathroom. It’s _Castle on the hill _by Ed Sheeran, the song Harry wanted to listen to that day when Zayn hacked his music app.

Gemma’s favourite song.

Harry realizes with an uneven thump of his damaged heart that even if he never spoke much with Zayn, and he never spoke about Gemma, listening to that song that very day—when he’d never listened to it before—was already saying much, too much, and yet he didn’t even realize it, because it just felt right with Zayn.

He grips the doorframe tightly, listening to Zayn sing about _had my first kiss on a Friday night, I don’t reckon that I did it right_ and _these people raised me and I can’t wait to go home_, and he desperately feels like he wants to finally open his mouth and talk, but he doesn’t.

Because it’s not something he can just _say_. He doesn’t even know _how _to say it. But wanting to do it, even just a tiny little bit, has to count for something.

Zayn stops singing, and his head peeks out of the shower curtain. Harry’s blood freezes because he’s standing there like a creep, and he doesn’t know how to tell Zayn he wasn’t trying to ogle him at all, he was just having another fucking internal monologue over an Ed Sheeran’s song.

Zayn, despite the situation being ridiculous, smiles a tiny smile. “You can join me. There’s space,” he just says, “If you want,” he adds, and then retires inside the shower again.

Harry apparently doesn’t need to be told twice, because the next moment he’s discarding his boxers somewhere, and he’s stepping inside the shower, and they’re fucking naked in front of each other, but they only look at each other in the eyes, because it’s not about physical nakedness right now, is it.

Zayn smiles and cups one side of Harry’s face, joining their foreheads and closing his eyes halfway. His eyelashes are long and wet, and they tickle Harry’s cheekbones when he blinks. “Alright, babe?” Zayn asks, in a murmur.

“It was her favourite song,” Harry replies, because that’s the only thing he can do right now, “_Castle on the hill_.”

Zayn opens his eyes. He stares into Harry’s for a long, long time, before nodding, like he understands how much strength it took Harry just to say that small, insignificant sentence.

“His favourite song was _Down with the sickness _by Disturbed,” Zayn replies, lowering his voice some more, and shaking a bit like a leaf. “I hated it with a passion. He knew.”

Harry nods as well, because he knows how much strength it took Zayn to say that small, insignificant sentence.

They stare at each other for a short eternity, and then they surge forward at the same time, the hot spray of the shower running over their bodies, and they kiss, water trickling in between their open mouths.

It’s not a small peck on the lips, even if it starts like one. But once their lips are connected, and Harry stays very still, Zayn tightens his grip on the side of Harry’s face, and opens his mouth some more, darting his tongue out until Harry opens up as well, to take it.

They both groan and kiss, and Harry doesn’t want his dick to already start filling up, but he can’t help it, because it’s Zayn, and because it’s been a long time since he had a hot kiss under a shower.

Zayn doesn’t seem deterred, and Harry’s heart almost stops when he feels Zayn’s own erection against his own, as they keep kissing, the wet sounds of their lips and tongues sliding against each other louder even than the spray of the shower.

They only stop to get some air, an indefinite amount of time later. “We don’t have to do anything,” Harry murmurs on Zayn’s lips, just to be clear. “We don’t. But if you don’t want to, you have to stop me now, Zayn.”

Zayn shakes his head. “I don’t want to stop. I’m tired of stopping. I’m tired of feeling like I died as well,” he says, voice louder and breaking. “Can you remind me I’m alive, Harry? Like your lemon pastries?”

Harry doesn’t understand what Zayn means by mentioning his lemon pastries, but he nods anyway, because he feels a bit like he died as well, but they’re both alive, aren’t they?

“Yes,” he tells Zayn, kissing him again. “You’re alive, Zayn. I’ll remind you.”

Zayn nods, frantically, his other hand grabbing the other side of Harry’s face, and their kiss becoming even more heated. Zayn shoves his tongue against Harry’s, groaning when Harry goes pliant against him, their chests moulding against each other and their crotches rubbing more.

Harry closes the water and opens the curtain, pulling Zayn out of the shower without interrupting the kiss. They stumble, wet and stark naked, back to Harry’s bedroom, and it’s so warm in the house that by the time they’re collapsing on the bed they’re already dry, and Harry looks up at Zayn’s hair, damp and loose. He remembers wondering how Zayn’s hair looked without the topknot. He’s not disappointed. He drives his fingertips along Zayn’s side shavings, and Zayn shivers a little, chuckling. “I have a sensitive scalp,” he tells Harry.

Harry chuckles too. “That’s weird.”

“You’re weird,” Zayn replies, scrunching his nose at Harry.

Harry just kisses him again, pulling him more on top of him, and Zayn sighs in the kiss, closing his eyes and running his hands up and down Harry’s sides. Then, Zayn pulls at Harry’s hips to make them both roll over, so that Harry finds himself on top, looking down at Zayn with his eyes half-lidded and his hair on the pillow like a black halo around his head.

“Fuck me, Harry,” Zayn says, whispers.

Harry is nodding before even questioning it. “Yeah, okay, okay,” he says, “Zayn, if… if you change your mind. At whatever time. You stop me, okay?” he has to add, because he understands that they both feel something for each other, but he also knows they’re both damaged goods, and he wants to be careful not to break whatever it’s still whole in Zayn’s heart.

Zayn nods, his eyes more vigilant. “You too. Same goes for you. Okay?” he retorts.

Harry nods. They kiss some more, and Harry scavenges through his drawer until he finds a condom and a half-full bottle of lube. He sets the items by Zayn’s head, and then starts a trail of kisses down Zayn’s neck, pecs, stomach, bypassing his hard cock to place another kiss on the inside of the vee of his groin, and another one lower, inside his right thigh.

That’s where he sees the scar.

It’s not big, it’s just a couple centimetres, and yet Harry feels his heart constrict, because it almost mirrors his own, the one he has on the outside of his own right thigh. A couple centimetres of paler skin is all Harry has as a memory of that night.

Zayn drives his fingers through Harry’s hair. “It’s a life of insignificant scars only we understand, babe,” he whispers. “But it’s not all we have. We have more. And it must count for something.”

Harry raises his head, shocked that Zayn has spoken as if he could perfectly read Harry’s thoughts.

In that moment, Harry thinks there are some ties that are stronger than love and blood. Because the connection he feels with Zayn is more than that, more than sitting in a circle, more than mourning the loss of a loved one, and more than a small scar. It feels like all that, and _more_.

So Harry nods. “I have an insignificant scar too,” he replies.

Zayn nods as well. “I know. I saw it when you were standing by the bathroom door. I understand, Haz, babe,” he says.

“I understand too, Zayn,” Harry just says.

After that, they don’t speak much, as usually happens, except everything is new and different now.

Harry licks a fat stripe up the underside of Zayn’s dick, which makes Zayn cry out in pleasure and fist the bedsheets underneath him. “Harry, you should know that… it’s been a really long fucking time,” Zayn just says in a pant.

Harry chuckles. “Same here,” he shrugs, “I got you, babe.”

Zayn nods, and groans when Harry resumes his sucking on Zayn’s tip, swirling his tongue around it and then inching forward, slowly and making sure to savour all the lovely sounds Zayn is making, until Harry’s nose hits the hair on Zayn’s pubes, inhaling the scent there. It smells like _Zayn_.

“Fuck, fuck, Harry, babe, fuck,” Zayn murmurs, his eyes closed and his back a bit arched. “It feels so good.”

Harry bobs his head up and down, causing Zayn to give out another cry, and at the same time he blindly coats his fingers in lube, rubbing the fingers against each other to warm it up a little before slowly circling one of them around Zayn’s rim.

Zayn sighs and groans, and Harry feels him relax under his ministrations. So he slides the first finger inside Zayn, who groans and curses some more, his hips stuttering.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Zayn is repeating, like it’s a mantra and the only thing he can say.

Harry lets his cock go with a wet sound, and places his lips on Zayn’s hip, looking up at him as he gets another finger inside.

Zayn grunts, and then his hand goes to Harry’s face, his thumb tracing Harry’s probably swollen lips. “You look like sin right now, Harry,” Zayn says with a chuckle. “It’s so fucking lovely on you.”

Harry smiles, and then starts scissoring his fingers. Zayn shouts and his head falls back on the pillows with another curse and a whimper as Harry adds a third finger and then twists his wrist, lightly brushing against Zayn’s spot.

Zayn emits a pitched whine, his hands going to grab Harry’s hair. “Fuck yes fuck fuck fuck Harry oh my God this feels too good I’m gonna come,” he rambles.

Harry stops at that. Zayn whines at the loss of contact when Harry retreats his hand and stands up on his knees in between Zayn’s legs, but Harry just shushes him with a kiss on his plump lips before reaching for the condom and ripping the foil open. He struggles because of how slick with lube his hands are, and Zayn fumbles to help him. Soon enough, the condom is rolled on Harry’s dick, and Harry is lining himself up with Zayn’s hole.

“Tell me if you need me to stop,” Harry tells Zayn one more time.

Zayn shakes his head. “I need you to fuck me right now, Harry, before I lose my mind.”

Harry nods, and he kisses Zayn as he pushes forward, as slowly as he possibly can, feeling himself breach Zayn inch by inch. Zayn whimpers and groans and gasps in their kiss, his nails digging at the base of Harry’s spine to push him faster, to which Harry resists, because he can feel it’s really been a long time for Zayn, for how tight he is.

“So tight, fuck, Zayn,” he can’t help but groan on his mouth. “So tight and hot.”

Zayn nods. “Move, babe, please, please,” he mutters.

Harry bottoms out, gives Zayn one more moment, and then obliges.

He starts slow, because it’s been a while for him as well. He hasn’t had sex in four or five months, when he decided to cut it with the useless hook-ups, but even before that, it never was quite this intense, this intimate, _this_.

Zayn feels hot and tight around him, and his hands are still scratching at Harry’s back, and he’s moaning low in his throat like he wants to tune it down but he just can’t help it, and it makes Harry only harder, that he’s reducing Zayn to such a mess. Not that he’s less of a mess, he knows, because he’s groaning and panting in Zayn’s neck as well, and his hips are bucking harder now even if he isn’t quite deciding on doing that.

Zayn doesn’t seem to mind, quite the opposite, because he pulls a little at Harry’s hair and kisses him before panting. “Harder, Harry. I can take harder. I want it harder, give it to me. You said you’d remind me we’re both alive.”

Harry nods, thrusting his tongue inside Zayn’s mouth while at the same time sliding out to the tip and pounding back in, which makes Zayn cry out in pleasure and squeeze his eyes shut. Harry can see tears forming in between his eyelashes, and he immediately halts all movements, his stomach turning, but Zayn opens his eyes again and doesn’t let Harry stop. “No no no, babe, it’s okay, I’m okay, I’m perfect, fuck, Harry, don’t stop, I’m close, fuck me, keep fucking me, keep me here with you, I want it, I never wanted it before since _him_ but I want it now and I want it with you, I don’t know where you’ve been all this time, you understand, you understand me, you’re here with me, don’t leave me…” Zayn rambles, almost too quick for Harry to catch, but he does catch it. He snaps his hips forward harder to give Zayn and himself what they both want.

To be closer to each other, to show each other they understand and they’re alive.

Zayn cries out, digs his nails in Harry’s shoulders, and he comes untouched with his eyes wide open, like his orgasm caught him by surprise. Harry shivers when he feels hot come spurt between their chests, and Zayn shouts and whispers Harry’s name in between curses and pleas, and Harry buries his face in Zayn’s neck, sucking a bruise on his pulse point while Zayn clenches around him and strokes Harry’s back up and down. “Come for me, babe,” Zayn murmurs, “Let me see you come, you’re so beautiful, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

Harry doesn’t need more. His blood boils in his stomach, and then he’s spilling into the condom, his hips stuttering inside Zayn and rocking both their bodies with the momentum he’s built. Zayn groans and gasps as Harry comes inside him, his arms wrapped around Harry’s neck and their foreheads joined with a layer of sweat between them.

Harry doesn’t pull out right away, because Zayn doesn’t let him. They both know he’s going soft and it’ll be uncomfortable in a while, but Zayn just shakes his head and keeps Harry tightly against him, kissing him and murmuring nothing and everything on Harry’s lips, “You’re beautiful”, “I thought I wouldn’t be able ever again”, “But I’m able with you because it’s _you_”, “You mean I’m alive” and “I mean _you’re _alive”. And Harry nods, he says “It must count for something” with a smile, and Zayn nods, replying “Yes, babe, it counts for something, it counts for everything”.

And that’s how they fall asleep tangled in each other.

+

Harry wakes up with an absurd pounding in his head, and in his heart. He gasps and sits, scared senseless that the night before has been the biggest mistake he ever made, for himself and for Zayn.

_What if he’s gone? What if it was too much for him? What if we fucked it all up even more than it was before?_

He frantically turns to his side, sure that Zayn will be long gone.

But Zayn is there, still asleep on his side, one arm now slung over Harry’s lap. It must have been around his chest before Harry sat up so abruptly.

_He’s here. He’s fine. We’re both fine, aren’t we? He asked me to remind him he’s alive and I’m alive as well. It wasn’t a mistake. I don’t _want _it to be a mistake._

Harry takes some deep breaths to calm his erratic heartbeat. He doesn’t want to wake Zayn up, not yet. He looks at the clock, and he sees that it’s 7 a.m. It’s so fucking _late _for Harry, and he’s pretty sure he was only able to sleep that long because he had Zayn to curl into. It’s been such a long time since he had someone in his bed.

No, this is not _someone_. It’s _Zayn_. That’s the real reason.

He will deal with baking fresh things for the bakery later. For now, he wants to keep listening to Zayn’s steady breaths as he’s still asleep. Harry looks around his room a little, and inevitably, his eyes land on the pictures on the wall.

Gemma.

Harry puts a hand on his chest, right where his heart is, and where he tattooed the small “G”, so small that hardly anyone ever noticed.

Zayn did notice, because after they had sex, while they were falling asleep, Harry saw him trace the letter without saying or asking anything, and then Zayn had put his lips on it, still not uttering a sound, before kissing Harry’s own lips as well.

Harry is pretty sure he didn’t even manage to tell Zayn his sister’s name, but Zayn understood anyway, probably.

Gemma winks and smiles at him from the pictures. It weirdly doesn’t hurt, thinking about her name.

“Gemma,” Harry whispers, and he manages. His eyes fill with tears, because that’s more than Harry ever wished for, being able to say his sister’s name again. “Gemma,” he whispers one more time, “I miss you so fucking much.”

He sniffles, drying his eyes and feeling them sting, and when he turns, he finds Zayn wide awake, looking at him with his big eyes. He smiles, and doesn’t ask what Harry said, or to say it again.

Harry smiles too, and slides down a little, to lay down next to Zayn again and curl up into his side. “I was scared you’d leave.”

Zayn shakes his head. “No. You’re too comfortable,” he replies, burying his face in the crook of Harry’s neck. “Don’t you have to go open the bakery?”

Harry chuckles. “Well, First Customer is here with me, so.”

“Why does it feel like you’re capitalizing the name?”

Harry laughs. “’Cause I do,” he reveals, his lips pressing on the crown of Zayn’s head. “You’ve been First Customer for six months. I noticed you. A fit bloke showing up right at opening time, with an obsession for my stupidest, easiest pastries couldn’t stay ignored for long.”

Zayn doesn’t reply, but he holds Harry a bit tighter. For a moment, Harry is afraid to have said something wrong, because Zayn’s grip feels a bit frenzied, a bit like he’s scared of something.

Zayn then raises his head, and for some reason, there are tears in his eyes. Harry doesn’t ask, but lets Zayn kiss him instead.

+

Zayn doesn’t leave Harry’s side for the whole day. He declares that he can take care of assembling the fucking wedding video in the bakery with his laptop, and he settles behind the counter with Harry, sitting on a stool so that he’s in Harry’s personal space all the time.

Harry doesn’t mind, and if a couple customers give them weird glances, he ignores them. Because he doesn’t feel like getting out of Zayn’s personal space either.

Zayn doesn’t even disturb Harry while he works. He doesn’t grab his thighs while he passes him by, doesn’t demand any kiss, and they barely speak. But it counts for something, that they don’t wanna be apart for the day.

They go to the meeting that night, together, and they hold hands while they walk there, without speaking.

When they get outside the school, right on the steps, Zayn stops Harry and kisses him with no apparent reason. “You’re fine, babe,” Zayn murmurs, giving Harry’s lips a series of the small pecks Harry has learned to love.

_Love. _The thought seems stupid and a bit rushed, and yet Harry can recognize the flutter in his heart as something he’s never felt before. It crosses his mind that Zayn has felt that before, though. Harry wonders about the lover he lost, sometimes. Were they together for long? Was it the kind of romance they make movies about?

It’s things he can’t ask, things Zayn will probably never tell him. But Harry only minds a little bit, because Zayn is there with him and he’s giving him small pecks on the lips, and in that moment, Harry doesn’t think he’s ever felt closer to any other human being.

They get inside the school and in the room where the meetings are hosted.

Harry takes in the drawings on the walls and the smaller chairs and tables lined up along the walls, things he hasn’t ever noticed before despite the fact that he’s been participating in the meetings for nine months now. How did he not notice that it’s a children’s classroom?

It dawns on him that there are a lot of small things he’s never noticed, too busy dealing with his own pain.

The way Janet hasn’t felt the need to re-tell her story in the last meetings, like she’s finally seeing the end of whatever journey she’s pushing through.

The fact that the young girl whose little brother died of cancer is still coming, and she says her name lately. She’s called Paula.

The engagement ring on Katherine’s finger, which he’s sure wasn’t there until a week earlier. He should congratulate her when the meeting’s over.

The way Zayn always sits next to Harry, and always puts a hand on Harry’s own hands even when Harry is mildly quiet, and not upset about the stories.

As people speak and speak, Harry comes to the realization he’s noticing those things because his mind feels a bit clearer, and it’s thanks to Zayn. It’s thanks to their shared pain, and it’s not because they’re using each other as a crutch. Those relationships never end up fine, because people are not crutches, and your pain is yours and yours alone.

No, Zayn and Harry are guiding each other through their loss and heartbreak. They let the other lose their course, only to grab him at the last second and steer him in the right direction again.

And it must count for something, mustn’t it?

“My name is Harry Styles,” he hears himself say at last. “I lost my sister a year ago. Her name was Gemma.”

He doesn’t know when he starts to speak, and part of him doesn’t fully want to. But the words tumble from his lips like water from a spring, and he knows that the only thing he can do is _speak_. Zayn gently removes his hand from him, like he knows and wants Harry to do this alone.

Harry has to.

“We went to the cinema to watch a movie I didn’t like, but she loved it, so I went with her because her friends bailed out on her at the last minute. We were walking down the street, it was way past midnight. Nothing ever happened in our neighbourhood,” Harry chuckles, shaking his head at how _easy _it feels to let it out, finally, like he used to do in therapy, and like he’s never been able to do again afterwards. “Someone came up to us. He had his face covered, and he had a knife. He shouted at us to give him our bags. Gemma got scared, and she screamed. The mugger got even more scared, probably, and he stabbed her in the stomach. I tried to stop him, only to get my own knife wound to the leg. He ran away. I called an ambulance. My hands were covered in blood. I tried to stop Gemma’s bleeding, pressed my hand on her stomach. It’s a lot of blood, stomach wounds. Gemma wasn’t speaking. And in that moment, I don’t know how, but I just _knew _she wasn’t gonna make it. She didn’t. She tried to say something to me. She never managed, and she died in my arms. I still don’t know what she wanted to say, but I know her, so it was probably something sappy like ‘I love you, baby bro’, or the like. This is the first time I speak about this to anyone except my therapist. I know it’s not my fault. I know I couldn’t have done anything. Rationally, I know. But most of the time I can’t be rational about Gemma, and I feel guilty about her dying, and me surviving.”

When Harry’s done, he feels like he’s run a mile. He’s kept his eyes lowered on the floor, but when he regains his breath, he thinks that the first thing he feels is _light_. Like there was something on his shoulders, and he finally shrugged it off.

He said Gemma’s name, repeatedly. He told her story, and his own.

He looks at Katherine, sitting across from him. She’s got tears in her eyes, which is weird, because Katherine is a trained therapist, and she never cries.

But it must be something, mustn’t it, looking at someone come to the meetings and never speak, for nine months, and then finally being able to listen to their story, and knowing you had a part in them mustering the willpower and courage to tell it.

So Harry smiles at her. Zayn doesn’t put his hand on Harry’s hands again, but Harry understands that too. That he himself needs a moment, and Zayn knows and is giving him that.

“I’m sure she was about to say that she loved you,” Paula says after a moment, her face glistening with her own tears. “You are pretty lovable, Harry,” she adds, smiling.

Harry chuckles, and when he blinks, a couple tears fall down his cheeks.

Yes. He feels light.

+

“It wasn’t your fault,” Zayn murmurs in the darkness of Harry’s bedroom, as they’re both splayed on the mattress with their legs slotted together. Zayn kisses Harry’s eyelids, drinking the tears pooling in them, the touch of his lips as light as a feather over Harry’s face. “It wasn’t your fault,” Zayn repeats, his hands running up and down Harry’s sides. “You’re lovely,” Zayn kisses the line of Harry’s jaw. “You’re good,” he runs his tongue along the seam of Harry’s lips. “You’re here with me, you’re fine,” he says placing a kiss in the hollow of Harry’s throat.

Harry sobs and hiccups under Zayn’s gentle touch, because whatever he did in the meeting room, the speaking, the retelling, the admitting, it’s taking its toll on him now, now that he’s alone with Zayn and safe in the scarce moonlight washing his bedroom in silver and white.

Zayn shushes him, kissing him slowly and lightly, and Harry keeps him above himself, to look up at him in the eyes. “Did I manage, Zayn?” he asks, sniffling. “To remind you that you’re alive, last night?”

Zayn nods.

“Can you do the same for me?” Harry asks, pleads. “I’m not your crutch, Zayn, and you’re not mine. But we’re keeping each other with our heads above water, and I’ve never felt this close to _healing _with anyone before. Is it the same for you? Do you feel like breathing is easier when I’m here with you?”

Zayn nods again, frantically. “Yes. Yes, Harry. Harry, Harry. I think you saved my fucking life with your smiles and your lemon pastries,” he replies, lowering his head to trap Harry’s lips in another kiss, a bit rougher, a bit headier.

Harry chuckles, despite it all. “You and your fucking lemon pastries,” he comments. “I really don’t know what you find in them.”

“One day I’ll tell you,” Zayn just says. “I admire you for what you did today, Harry. Not because you spoke. But because you found the strength to admit the guilt you feel,” he kisses Harry again before continuing. “But it wasn’t your fault, babe. I know my opinion doesn’t count shit in this, but here you have it.”

“But it must count for something, Zayn,” Harry smiles, cries and nods.

They don’t speak much after that. Zayn takes his time undressing Harry and letting Harry undress him, and when they’re naked and at their most vulnerable, Harry raises his head to look up at Zayn again.

“Fuck me, Zayn,” Harry whispers. “Remind me I’m alive, and you too.”

Zayn nods, taking out a condom and lube from Harry’s drawer.

When Zayn opens Harry up, slowly and thoroughly, Harry thinks it’s been ages since he’s bottomed. He welcomes the burn and pleasure like two old friends, though, because they mean Zayn is indeed reminding him that he’s alive, that he feels pain and pleasure like every other human being, and that his pain and pleasure are not his alone, but the ones of thousands of people fucking and mourning, because we’re all the same deep down where it counts.

When Zayn grabs Harry’s legs and drapes them over his shoulders, lining his dick with Harry’s hole, and starts to push, Harry closes his eyes and relaxes, letting Zayn in with all he has, because there’s no other place he’d rather be in that moment, not even his beloved bakery, the place where he’s stored all his tears and smiles, the ones belonging to Gemma.

When Zayn starts slowly, Harry begs him for more and harder. Zayn understands the need, because it was his same need the night before, and he complies, digging his fingers into the meat of Harry’s thighs, where his scar is, and leaving marks of his own as he slams his hips back and forth inside Harry. His marks will not be as permanent as that scar, but they’re equally small, equally insignificant, and equally more important than anything else because of what they mean.

Zayn rolls over and lets Harry ride him, and Harry does, feeling the burn in his calves for muscles he hasn’t used in a long time, and the burn in his heart, which he also hasn’t completely used in a long time. Zayn looks up at Harry and guides his hips up and down on his cock, and his eyes are big and his smile is small, and Harry thinks that he looks like he can’t believe his fucking luck, when really, it’s Harry who can’t believe it.

Then, Zayn sits up and rises on his knees, keeping Harry in his lap and moving him as he pleases, up and down, up and down, and Harry has nothing to hold on to, his body in the air and not touching anything except Zayn himself, his shoulders, his neck which Harry wraps his arms around as he comes with a cry and Zayn’s name on his lips.

Zayn follows suit, latching his mouth onto Harry’s, whispering Harry’s name and “It wasn’t your fault, babe, you’re perfect, you’re my Harry, you’re brave, you’re _you_”.

+

Harry wakes up alone the morning after, and when Zayn doesn’t answer his phone and doesn’t show up at the bakery, he understands he’s scared Zayn away with his story, his guilt, everything.

So, after a couple hours of trying, Harry stops. He stops trying to reach Zayn’s phone, because it’s turned off, and he stops expectantly raising his eyes to the door whenever it dings, hoping one of the customers will be his First Customer.

Instead, Harry stays in the bakery, and bakes lemon pastry after lemon pastry, crying because he misses Gemma, he misses Zayn, and Zayn never told him why he likes those pastries that much.

+

Harry isn’t expecting Zayn to show up at the next meeting, three days later, but Zayn does anyway.

He gets inside the room with his chin up, and his eyes are dry, although Harry can see they’re a bit red. Harry smiles, because in that moment, it doesn’t really matter why Zayn disappeared or if he suddenly realized things with Harry were going too fast, too soon.

What matters is that Zayn made Harry a promise in the bakery, two weeks earlier which feel a bit like two decades, and he’d told Harry he wouldn’t stop coming to the meetings.

Harry has an empty chair for him next to himself, and Zayn takes it surely. They don’t speak, but Zayn meets Harry’s eyes.

The truth is that Harry lied to himself, he _was _expecting Zayn to show up. So he reaches for his backpack, and he pulls out a small carton from the bakery, with a lemon pastry inside. He gives it to Zayn.

Zayn takes it with a smile, but he doesn’t open it. He keeps it in his lap, his fingers wrapped around it, tracing the embossed letters of the word _Honeybuns _over the silhouette of a girl with bangs and a ponytail holding a tray of donuts. Zayn now knows the stylised profile of the girl is Gemma’s.

People speak, people don’t speak.

“My name is Zayn Malik,” Harry hears out of the blue, and his own hands start to shake. Zayn keeps speaking, and his hand goes to Harry’s. Harry understands that it’s not to calm Harry down. It’s for Zayn himself, because he needs someone to keep his head above water. So Harry entwines their fingers, and listens.

“My name is Zayn Malik,” Zayn says again, clearing his throat. “I had a boyfriend. His name was Ben. He died in a car accident,” he gulps down some air. “We were together for two years. Our relationship was going to shit, had been for months. But I held him very dear, and I didn’t want to give up on it. That night, we were in the car, and Ben was driving. We were fighting. I was stupid, and I kept screaming, even though he was at the wheel. Ben said that he hated me, sometimes. I said that sometimes I hated him more. Then he got distracted, and our car crashed against a light pole. I got a minor injury in my leg. Ben died on the spot. I still feel guilty. I think the accident was my fault. I’m so sorry that the last thing he heard was that I hated him, and that the last thing he told me was the same thing. Because maybe we didn’t love each other anymore, but I’m sure we didn’t hate each other.”

Harry feels tears running down his cheeks, and he wonders if this mix of feelings is what Zayn felt when it was Harry who was speaking.

Zayn’s tale is over. Nobody replies. Harry holds Zayn’s hand harder, and Zayn never lets go.

+

They don’t speak about it, but they implicitly decide to go to Harry’s. Once they get inside, though, they do speak.

They speak for a long time. Harry asks questions about Ben, and Zayn answers them, while they both lay down on Harry’s bed, their hands holding each other, all clothes still in place.

Zayn tells Harry about when and where he met Ben, how they fell in love, and how they fell out of love. “But not out of fondness,” Zayn says. “Never that. I miss him so much. I never stopped missing him, and I probably never will. I’m sorry I disappeared, Harry. I needed time to think, and I had to be alone, because I needed to understand if I was healing by myself with your help, or just _because of you_. It’s the first. I’m healing for and by myself. But I still want you in my life. Not as a crutch. As someone I love. But I don’t know if you’ll ever deem me _enough_, when I have someone else I loved, someone who died, freezing the love I felt for them forever.”

Harry understands, is the thing. Because he knows certain kinds of love never die. His love for Gemma will never die. Zayn can keep his love for Ben, and he’ll still be enough for Harry. It doesn’t mean he’ll love Harry less than what he feels, less than what Harry deserves.

So Harry looks at Zayn in the eyes, and cups the side of his face with his hand, knocking their foreheads together. “You were enough even when you just sat in my bakery and smiled at me under your eyelashes, Zayn,” Harry tells him. “You’re enough. We’re healing our losses, and each other. That’s always gonna be enough. You’ll never stop loving Ben, and you shouldn’t. But I want to love you all the same, and I want you to love _me _all the same. Can you do that, Zayn? Can you love me?”

Zayn nods, sniffling. “I fell a little in love with you six months ago, when I found your bakery,” he says, never pulling away from Harry. “The day after Ben died. That was the first day I came to _Honeybuns_.”

Harry’s stomach flips a little, but he keeps listening, because he and Zayn never spoke much, but now they need to.

Zayn sniffles some more and continues. “I woke up that morning, alone, knowing I had to go to Ben’s funeral in the afternoon. I thought I was dying, babe. I couldn’t stand my own sight in the mirror, so I ran out of the house. I walked aimlessly, and at some point, I saw the bakery’s sign. I felt so stupid, because Ben had died, and there I was, feeling hungry and with my stomach rumbling. I came inside, because I saw it was empty except for you. You smiled. I saw the pastries, they were straight out of the oven. So I ordered one, and I ate it. It was really fucking good, but that’s not the point,” Zayn chuckles. “I went away after that. I went to Ben’s funeral. Then I went back home. That night, when I took off my t-shirt, I found a stain of lemon cream on the hem. I sucked on it, and I remembered the pastry. And I thought, ‘This morning I was dying, and yet here I am. I got to the end of the day, and I’m still alive’. So, the next morning, I came back. And the next. And the next. Your lemon pastry became a symbol of the fact I was surviving, babe. And months later, _you _came to mean the same thing, and more, to me.”

Harry nods, and kisses Zayn, because he understands, and Zayn too.

+

**Two years later**

The day the bakery becomes famous, as Niall once predicted, it’s not even because of Harry, but because of Zayn.

Zayn got a gig as an executive producer for a movie that looked so insignificant at first, and then became more and more famous. As sometimes happens with insignificant things, they can come to mean a lot more than they seem at first.

When the paps get a hint of Zayn Malik’s husband owning a bakery, all hell breaks loose.

One morning, Zayn is eating his lemon pastry sitting on the counter before actual opening time, with his legs around Harry’s hips, while Harry just stares at him and grins. Then, the door dings, and _Honeybuns _is swarmed by paps.

“Oh, fucking hell,” Harry mutters, rolling his eyes.

That’s how _Honeybuns _became famous, and that’s how Harry had to follow Niall’s advice, and expand the space, make the room bigger so that more tables fit, buy a fourth oven, and hire two lovely people in their early twenties to serve tables. The two lovely people happen to be Paula, with which Zayn and Harry shared more than most people know, and her boyfriend. All in all, everything is fine.

Many things changed in the bakery. Now, a couple of Gemma’s pictures are hung behind the counter, and when Harry looks at them, he smiles, and his heart doesn’t hurt that much.

A couple pictures of Ben and Zayn have joined the ever-growing collection on the fridges. Because Harry never knew Ben, but Zayn did, and Harry feels like the bakery is Zayn’s just as much as it’s Harry’s. So Ben deserves a place in it, because he has a place in Zayn’s heart.

Niall, Liam and Louis are the “bestest of friends”, Louis’s words. It’s true, because they’re always at Harry’s (and now Zayn’s) place, most of the time without having been invited, and they’re loud, but Harry doesn’t mind. Sometimes Zayn is in a mood and he just wants to fuck Harry against all the vertical surfaces of the house. Those nights, Zayn has literally zero problems kicking their friends out. Harry doesn’t mind that either, and he bakes them pies the next day to apologise for Zayn’s insatiable sex drive.

Some things don’t change, though.

The bakery is still Harry’s most prized possession. People still make fun of him, because most of them don’t know what it means. Harry smiles and shrugs, and asks them if they want to try his new recipe. They always like it in the end.

Zayn still loves the lemon pastries. They’re still a symbol, to him and to Harry.

The pastries have a name, now, which Zayn gave to them. They’re called _Gems_, but very few people know what the name actually means.

Harry still teaches Zayn how to bake, late at night in the bakery’s kitchen, and Zayn still messes up when he tries to bake the _Gems_ himself, but it’s okay, because if the kitchen burns down, Niall made sure Harry’s insurance is even more amazing than before.

Zayn still gets sugar crumbs stuck to his mouth on purpose. Harry smiles, and tells him he’ll always bake him lemon pastries, and lick the sugar from his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> This was very long and very sad, and I cried a lot. I'm in quite the angsty mood lately, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.
> 
> Till next time!


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